A Clash of Heroes
by Mengde
Summary: Cosmos and Chaos fight a war eternal, but the face of the conflict will be forever changed when the Goddess of Order calls for aid from two proven warriors. Before Tidus, there was Auron… and before Cloud, there was Sephiroth. This is their story.
1. Chapter I

Hello everyone, Mengde here. It's been a dreadfully long time since I've posted something, hasn't it? Well, my lovely beta VulcanElf definitely thinks so. I had previously shared the idea for this story with her as a sort of passing fancy, and when I visited her a couple weeks ago she pushed me to write it. So here's the first chapter of A Clash of Heroes! If you like Auron, or Sephiroth, or the idea of Dissidia, you're sure to find something to suit your fancy here. Also note: you need not have played Dissidia to read this fic! There will be spoilers for the story, but the story is about as interesting as stale bread, so trust me when I say you're not missing anything.

On... to adventure!

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* * *

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**A Clash of Heroes**

**A Dissidia Fan Fiction**

**Written by Mengde  
**

Once upon a time, two people had an argument.

This argument was different from all others, mostly because there had never been any other arguments before it. It was the first difference of opinion between two people capable of debate, and the subject of their discourse was the very nature of reality.

Unfortunately, there would be no civilized discussion, with points and counterpoints laid out with surgical precision. How could there be when the debaters were arguing for their existence and defeat meant their end? Moreover, the two needed one another. Without one, the other was incomplete, bereft of meaning.

More sensible beings might agree to disagree under such circumstances, but it was not in the nature of these two to stop. Their argument continued, and from it came all others. No matter how removed from the original subject, any given difference of opinions could be traced back to the root, the first, the ur-argument. As befitting an argument of such importance, it eventually drew other combatants in. Some called these others pawns, and some called them heroes, and some denied that they could be classified.

Regardless of their title, these others fought for one of the sides, or sometimes for themselves. Their contributions to the war were varied – some small, some great. However, none of them ultimately had any real impact on the argument.

None, at least, until the two with whom this tale is concerned. They were the first, and it is possible they will be the last.

This is their story.

* * *

Two men stand before the Plains of Chaos. The Plains are an endless waste, where fire rains from the skies and swords the size of cities thrust up from the tormented landscape. In a very real sense, the Plains are their master; though he inhabits them, he _is _them. To cross the Plains is to fight him, if indirectly, and these two intend just that.

As they take their first steps into the Plains, shadowy figures emerge from thin air, rippling and indistinct at first but quickly becoming clearer and more solid. They are monochromatic, humanoid beings, light reflecting through their crystalline bodies. Someone once called them 'manikins,' and the title stuck. As they look upon the intruders, their features twist and warp until, as a whole, the army is made up of the likenesses of two people: a broad, burly man with an enormous sword and a slim one wielding a sword with a long, flat blade and a basket hilt. The burly manikins are a bright orange; the slim ones are cyan.

Auron straightens up and draws his Masamune from where it's slung across his back. "This is hardly fair," he says. His coat flaps as a gust of wind, sooty and drier than Hell itself, rolls past them.

From where it is sheathed at his waist, Sephiroth draws his own Masamune. "Of course it is. There are a potentially infinite number of them."

Auron indulges in a small smile behind the lip of his collar. "I meant for them. They can't really stop us, can they?"

Sephiroth works at a crick in his neck, feels it pop satisfyingly. "Point."

"Race you to the Throne?" Auron asks, looking Sephiroth right in the eye.

The first of the manikins reaches them, a cyan one. It raises its sword and charges. Without taking his gaze off Auron's face, Sephiroth lashes out in a lightning-fast cut and bisects the manikin at the waist. Its crystalline form shatters and crumbles away to fine sand, which is swept away by the dust devils that continuously rage through the Plains.

"Keep up if you can," he says, the barest hint of his own smile in his eyes.

They rush forward and cut through the manikins like so much chaff.

* * *

This is the end of their story, however. To understand it, we must return to its beginning.

In the furthest beginnings, the argument was conducted through elemental forces, a primal dialogue measured in geologic ages. Later, when the seas of various worlds birthed small, fragile creatures that measured time in miniscule spans, the argument became a series of rapid-fire exchanges, with weapons of flesh and bone that fought small personal combats lasting mere minutes.

Overall, this was a much more efficient way of going about the whole affair. Whole worlds no longer passed in and out of existence during a single exchange. At this rate, the universe might actually still be around by the time a conclusion was reached.

Still, the debaters failed to realize a critical flaw in their new approach. Their tools, once great natural forces of entropy and order, were now living collections of mostly water and carbon – their forms governed by chains of amino acids, their existences propagated primarily by their own foolish notion that they were the center of the universe.

This would not present a problem, save for one fact: many of these walking bags of water could not only think for themselves, but also did not appreciate being used.

* * *

It is about eleven o'clock in the morning by his reckoning when Auron wakes up and realizes he is no longer in Zanarkand.

Instead, he is lying on the ground. It is made of water, but instead of sinking into it, he sits on its surface. Getting to his feet, he sees nothing except a grey, cloudy sky and the water extending in all directions.

"Scenic," he murmurs to himself. "Where am I?" His voice fades into nothingness, with no echo or response. Whoever brought him here, he thinks, is going to regret it unless they have some very good excuses. He would guess he had been swept out to sea, but the fact that he is standing atop the water rather than sinking into it makes that theory hard to carry very far. He doubts the laws of physics have changed while he was asleep.

Auron recalls his last memories. He'd seen Tidus home from blitzball practice, despite the young man's protestations that he didn't need a babysitter. He'd exchanged pleasantries with the boy's mother, who was in deteriorating shape. She had already been consumed with fear and worry after her husband's disappearance, and now that Auron had arrived with news of Jecht's fate – he had said only that Jecht was no longer among the living – he'd been able to tell she was not long for this world.

He can always tell these things, now that he is no longer of it himself.

Then he'd gone home, where he had proceeded to fall asleep – one of the few human needs he still possesses – in his armchair. He can't stand to lie down on a bed. It reminds him too much of dying.

And now he is here.

Auron is fairly sure he would be able to tell if someone had physically moved him, so between that and the strangeness of this place he concludes that he was brought here magically. To what point and purpose, however, is still a mystery, one he is determined to solve.

For a few minutes he surveys his surroundings, looking for any change and finding none. At last, Auron decides that he has no idea where he is, so he cannot get any more lost by wandering. Food and drink are not the concern they once were, so he picks an arbitrary direction and starts off in it. He will walk until he is tired, and then he will sleep, and then he will keep walking. Something will happen eventually.

His footfalls make little splashing noises against the otherwise-solid surface of the ground. Apart from that, he travels in silence. No wind scrapes against the fabric of his coat, and he does not need to breathe. Being unsent has its advantages.

He walks, and he walks, and he walks…

* * *

Sephiroth does not sleep the way normal people do. He closes his eyes and stops moving and slows his breathing, it's true, but he is not asleep in any real sense. It is a kind of trance, one where he is still aware of the world around him.

He's never understood why, and has always just put it down as one of the many things that makes him different. It has helped him, as well, kept him alive when a sleeping man would have been killed or captured, so he doesn't mind the fact that he has no dreams and has to pass the long hours alone.

Consequently, when the pillar of light blossoms inside his room, he is instantly aware of it, seeing the sudden blaze of color through his closed lids. Wutai has already sent several assassins to try to kill him, fearing a confrontation with him in open combat, though they deny even knowing of the men's existences. Thinking this is another attack, Sephiroth snaps open his eyes, he plucks the Masamune from where it is mounted on the wall above his bed, and he slices at the light in a brutal chop that would cut through a human being like paper.

He is thrown off-balance when his attack sails through the pillar without resistance. The point of the Masamune is buried in the floor, and he wastes a precious second tugging it out as the pillar closes in on him. Sephiroth hears a voice in his head, whispering assurances and calming nothings. He throws out his right hand and blasts the pillar with a Bolt, but it keeps coming, the voices intensifying and taking on a familiar quality.

Sephiroth is about to slash the pillar again when he realizes who the pillar sounds like. His eyes widen and he whispers, "Mother?"

Then it engulfs him and he is gone.

* * *

The next thing he is aware of is someone stroking his hair. He shifts his body, and other sensory details become evident to him. He is lying down on his back, his hands crossed over his chest. In his room, he was wearing a robe and nightclothes, but now he is in his combat gear. His head is pillowed in somebody's lap, and she smells like his mother.

It is only after several minutes of lying there, eyes closed, just enjoying the feeling of being protected and treasured, that he realizes he has no idea what his mother smells like because she died giving birth to him. Then he remembers the pillar of light, and his eyes snap open.

The woman stroking his hair is not his mother. She is fair-skinned, with pale golden hair, eyes of the same color, beautiful features, and a white robe with golden ornamentation secured by a clasp at the top of her breastbone, leaving her shoulders and arms bare. On her face is an expression of calm, perhaps even contentment. They are seated on what seems like water, save for the fact that they do not sink below its surface, and a cloudy grey sky looms above them. Behind the woman is a long, low bench made of what looks like ivory, flanked by two large shell-like structures.

Sephiroth gropes with his left hand and feels the Masamune lying beside him. In one smooth motion, he seizes it, swings it up, and lays its blade flush against the woman's throat. She stops stroking his hair and sits stock-still, but her expression does not change.

"You will remain exactly as you are, without tensing any of your muscles or moving save to breathe," Sephiroth begins. "You will speak when I tell you to, not before, and you will stop when I tell you to stop. Deviate from any of this, and I will kill you instantly. If you understand what I am saying, blink twice."

The woman, her gaze locked on his, blinks twice.

"Good. Now, you will answer my questions. Who are you?"

"I am Cosmos," she says in a high, clear voice like the ringing of chimes. "Goddess of Order."

"Where are we?"

"My domain, the Sanctuary of Order."

"Why have you brought me here?" At this point she smiles, so Sephiroth presses the edge of his sword against her throat just enough to draw blood.

Nothing happens.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Sephiroth, but you can't kill me so easily," Cosmos says to him. "I'm not made of flesh and blood like you. I don't bleed when cut."

Abruptly, Sephiroth realizes how foolish he must seem. He feels blood rushing to his face, a sensation he has not experienced in years; he removes the Masamune from Cosmos's throat and sits up, letting his hair obscure his expression. "I take it you don't intend me harm. If you did, I'm sure you could have killed me by now."

"Quite the contrary, Sephiroth. I want only the best for you. I wish you only success."

He finds himself thinking of the sensation of her stroking his hair, shakes it off. "Success in what? You haven't answered my question."

"Why have I brought you here? I need your help."

"With what?"

"I –" Cosmos held up a hand and closed her eyes. "Wait. There he is. I was afraid I had lost him. Bringing him here was more difficult than it was with you."

"What are you talking about?"

Cosmos reaches out and sweeps her palm across the horizon. Where there was nothing, Sephiroth now sees a man, dressed in red and carrying a massive sword, marching toward them. He seems as surprised at his sudden appearance as Sephiroth is. After halting and regarding the two of them for a moment, the man continues toward them, albeit with his hand now resting on the hilt of his sword.

"Welcome, Auron," Cosmos calls out when he comes within earshot. "I apologize. Your nature made it difficult to bring you directly here from your world."

He looks at her, then at Sephiroth, and the silver-haired young man realizes that this Auron has only one eye. Something about the knowledge, and the cold feeling of the man's gaze, is deeply unsettling, though Sephiroth cannot articulate why.

"Who are you, and why have you brought me here?" Auron asks, addressing the both of them though his gaze comes to rest on Cosmos. "Speak quickly."

Cosmos holds out her hands in a placatory gesture. "We are allies here, Auron, believe me. I will answer all your questions – both of you – given time. First, though, put away your weapons and come sit with me. There must be no hostility between us if we are to have a chance."

"A chance of what?" Sephiroth asks, not yet ready to sheath his sword.

The Goddess of Order looks at him, and he sees pity in her eyes. "Why, of survival, of course. I brought you here to fight a war."

"Against who?" Auron asks.

"The end of existence itself, of course." Cosmos smiles. "After all, what else would I need your help against?"


	2. Chapter II

I'm glad to hear everyone is enjoying the story so far. A quick word - I forgot to mention last chapter that I will be updating this story once a week, on Wednesday, in order to alleviate some of the hump-day suck that I'm sure everyone goes through. With that said, here's Chapter II. Enjoy!

* * *

"I brought you here," Cosmos says, "because I need powerful, brave mortals to help me break the stalemate between me and the enemy."

"And who would this enemy be?" Auron asks before Sephiroth can get a word in.

Cosmos's expression falls. "Chaos," she says. "Everything I am, he is not. He is like a black mirror, the inverse of me, all that is good and orderly about my existence twisted into a horrible grotesquerie."

"You said you are the Goddess of Order," Sephiroth says. "Would that make him the God of Chaos – of himself?"

"I am the embodiment of order and law. As I said, he is what I am not."

"It's easy for you to say that you're the embodiment of order and law, but how can we trust that you're telling the truth?" Auron asks. Sephiroth notes that the man still has not removed his hand from his sword hilt. "If you have the power to bring us to this place from Spira, then you might have the power to disguise yourself. You could be Chaos, misleading us into doing his bidding. And even if you are genuine –" his eye narrows – "you haven't told us why we should help you, what makes you better than him."

Cosmos laughs, but not dismissively. She sounds genuinely amused and impressed. "And what do you think?" she asks, turning to Sephiroth. "Are you as cynical as your friend?"

"We're not friends," Sephiroth says. "We've never met."

"You will have to grow to be friends if you hope to overcome the challenges ahead."

"You're clouding the issue," Auron snaps. "Answer her first question, boy."

Sephiroth stiffens as a flash of anger shoots through him. "Who are you calling 'boy'? You can't be much older than me."

"You have no idea what you're talking about. Now – what do you think of all this?"

Restraining the urge to lash out again, Sephiroth musters his composure. "I think," he says, "that anyone who abducts a man from his bed without asking his permission is going about things the wrong way. That's my first problem. Second, why us? I may be a general, and I'm sure that man has seen combat, but what do you expect us to do against a god? And by that same token, I _am _a general and have a duty to my men and Shin-Ra. I can't be your errand boy when there's a war going on and our men are disappearing left and right."

Cosmos nods. "I appreciate your honesty, Sephiroth. Let me try, then, to address your concerns.

"Believe me when I say that I could not effect your travel any other way. If I had tried to manifest more fully in your world, enough to hold a dialogue with you, it would have given Chaos an opening he could exploit. The most I can do is bring you here, and try to make the transition as painless as possible.

"As for why the two of you are the ones I chose, it is because Chaos has preempted me and chosen his soldiers first. I have a measure of insight into the workings of the future, and so I chose you because you are the ones that can deal with his soldiers most effectively."

"Why would Chaos draw his soldiers from Spira?" Auron asks.

"You said that name once before," Sephiroth says. "What is it?"

Auron stares hard at Sephiroth, seeming to notice his battle gear for the first time. "I thought you dressed strangely," he murmurs. "Are you from Zanarkand?"

"Auron," Cosmos says, "you are from Spira, but Sephiroth is not. He is from a world called Gaia, and though it is not so very far from your own, it is distinct. You are from different worlds."

Sephiroth raises an eyebrow. "Different worlds? So there are other inhabited planets in the universe."

"It is not a universe," Cosmos corrects him. "More a multiverse. Your worlds exist parallel to one another, and to many others."

"If what you say is true, then why would Chaos choose our specific worlds to draw soldiers from?" Auron asks. "I don't know anything about Gaia, but I can only imagine that within this multiverse there are a myriad of worlds. Surely within one of those there exists a beast or power that will suit him better than anything Spira has to offer. Unless he took Sin itself…?"

"You have a keen insight, Auron," Cosmos says, and extends one of her hands. In her palm grows the image of a man with wild black hair and copper eyes. He is broad and powerfully muscled, with an enormous tattoo of some sort of hooked symbol covering his bare chest. He wears a ragged pair of pants that look like they have seen better days, a bright orange cloth covered in black flames that falls down his right leg, a red headband, and a steel gauntlet on his left arm and hand. Sephiroth observes the man for a long moment, then looks at Auron to gauge the man's reaction.

He expects surprise or even shock, but what he sees instead is a deep, smoldering fury. Auron's lips are pressed into a thin, white line, his good eye narrowed, his brow furrowed. He takes several deep breaths before he finally speaks, and when he does it sounds like every word scrapes its way out of his throat.

"He has no right."

Sephiroth feels his opinion of this man shift. He is far more dangerous than he appears if he can maintain control during such a terrible fury. "No right to what?" he asks.

Auron ignores his question and instead looks at Cosmos. "I'll fight your little war," he tells her. "Just show me the way and I'll kill Chaos for you."

"The path to him is not easy, and your friend stands in the way," Cosmos says. "Are you prepared to do what is necessary?"

"Apart from Braska, I know him the best of anyone. I can beat him without killing him."

"That may not be enough."

"It'll have to be."

There are too many variables in play here, Sephiroth thinks. Cosmos still has not answered all their questions, and she has not told him the identity of the soldier Chaos has recruited from Gaia. Auron's sudden willingness to cooperate, when he was so hesitant before, is troubling. Most importantly, if Cosmos is what she claims to be and even she cannot defeat Chaos, what hope do he and Auron have against the god? Still, he remains silent. He wants to see how this will play out.

Then Cosmos looks at him. "What of you, Sephiroth? Auron has committed himself. I hope you will do the same."

"Who is the one Chaos took from Gaia?" Sephiroth asks.

Cosmos holds out her hand again, and this time the image is very familiar. It is of a slim man, with handsome features and collar-length brown hair. He wears an outfit similar to Sephiroth's own, but the coat is fashioned from red leather instead of black and his pauldrons are black leather instead of burnished steel. He holds a sword with a long, flat blade the color of blood.

His name is Genesis Rhapsodos, and by Sephiroth's reckoning, he deserted with much of the Shin-Ra SOLDIER corps only a few days ago.

Sephiroth stares long and hard at the facsimile, trying to make himself inscrutable. He can feel Auron's penetrating gaze, and Cosmos is unabashedly studying him for a reaction. "If we win this war for you," he says at last, "will we go home?"

"You will," Cosmos assures him.

"And how much time will have passed?"

"It will be as though you never left, that much I can promise you."

Sephiroth nods. "Then I'll help you – but not for the sake of winning your battles or unseating Chaos. There are things I need to ask him, things that I need to see cleared between us. If defeating Chaos will send us home, then that's what I'll do."

"What the both of you will do," Cosmos prompts him.

He looks at Auron, who gives him the barest of nods. "Yes."

"I am so relieved," Cosmos says. "You both have my everlasting gratitude."

"I can do without it," Auron replies, his tone curt. "The only other thing I need from you is to have the path pointed out."

"There is no one path. You two must seek it out together. The journey matters as much as the destination, Auron." Her eyes gleam for a moment. "You of all people should know that, Legendary Guardian."

This time, Auron does not maintain control nearly so well. "Stick your fingers inside my mind again," he growls, "and I'll kill you, too. I swear it."

"Of course. I apologize." She turns away from both of them, regards the horizon. "Far from here lie the Plains of Chaos, a trackless waste. At their center, which is also their only end, is the Edge of Madness, which holds the Throne of Chaos. It is from there that he manipulates the forces at his command and makes war against me, mostly in ways and on levels you could never comprehend. But it is on this level, and in this way – the trials of flesh, the struggles against mortality – that will ultimately decide the conflict. That is your destination."

"And how do we get there?" Sephiroth asks.

Though he cannot see her face, he can feel her smile, like he is standing in a pool and a ripple is passing around him. "Look straight ahead," she replies, "and start walking."

* * *

Auron and Sephiroth have been doing just that for an hour, with Auron marching a few paces ahead and Sephiroth following him, before either of them says anything.

As it happens, Sephiroth is the one who chooses to break the endless sound of their footsteps thudding wetly along the endless ocean. "I don't think we're getting anywhere."

"She said to walk," Auron replies. "So we walk."

Sephiroth accedes and does that for a while, but quickly grows bold again. "Cosmos said she had more difficulty bringing you here than she did with me," he says. "Why is that?"

"I haven't a clue."

"You're lying."

"How astute."

"You could just tell me you'd rather not say. I wouldn't get offended."

"Fine. I'd rather not say."

Sephiroth purses his lips and thinks. "So who is the man she showed you?"

"I'd rather not say."

"I'm not asking you to tell me for nothing. I'll tell you who she showed me."

"I'm not interested in who she showed you."

In most cases, Sephiroth finds it very hard to take offense at anything. However, Auron is quickly chapping his hide. He needs to find a way around this man's defenses, provoke a reaction. "He must be someone important to you, to make you so enraged and convince you to agree to Cosmos's request," he says.

"This is no request," Auron scoffs. "We're doing her no favors by undertaking this mission. She would have us do it regardless of how we feel; she would just rather we feel strongly about it."

"How do you know this?"

"I have many experiences with people – in the loosest sense of the word, that is – like her. She would not have used her time and power to bring us here just to have us say no. We are following her plan, have no doubt of that."

"And you're fine with that?"

"No, but I'm less fine with the fact that this counterpart of hers has interfered with the operation of my world. God or not, he does not have that right."

"What is your world like, then?"

"Unfortunate."

"What is?"

"My world."

Sephiroth makes a low noise in his throat, absorbing this information. He thinks he is beginning to get a feel for what sort of person this Auron is. "So who is the man she showed you?" he asks again.

"I told you I'd rather not say."

"Is he a friend?" Sephiroth continues, watching Auron carefully. "A brother?" Nothing. He thinks, decides to go in hard. "A lover?"

Auron snorts. "Even if I did prefer the company of men, I can assure you he did not." He glances over his shoulder. "Is that what you think of me, or is that a more self-serving inquiry?"

"I don't understand those desires," Sephiroth replies. "Why humans are drawn to one another. Why they have to touch one another, even in casual greetings. It is just something I have never comprehended."

For another moment, Auron looks at him, then turns his attention back to the road ahead, such as it is. "You are a strange one, Sephiroth."

"You are too, Auron," Sephiroth replies. "Especially since I can't hear your heartbeat."

Auron stiffens and nearly stops in his tracks before he catches himself. "You have very acute hearing, then."

"Acute enough. What are you, really?"

"The same as you. Different."

"That's an extreme generalization."

"It's also the truth."

"Fair enough." Sephiroth waits a beat. "So, who _is _the man she showed you?"

"You're persistent," Auron says. "It reminds me of a boy I know."

"Really? Who?"

"His son."

This time it is Sephiroth's turn to nearly stop in his tracks as it begins to make sense. "Are you his guardian in his father's place, then?"

"…yes."

"And this is a chance for you to bring him back to his son."

Auron says nothing at first, just continues to walk. After some time, he finally murmurs, "How astute." There is no mockery in his voice this time. Raising his voice, he asks, "And what about you? You said you had questions for your counterpart, that there were things between you two best cleared. Why did you agree to be a blade for Cosmos?"

Sephiroth considers the question and settles on the first thing that comes to mind. "Duty."

"Then we can work together, I suppose. Good."

They lapse back into silence after that, the _splish, splish_ of their footfalls again the only sound. For lack of anything else to watch, Sephiroth observes the sky, trying to find faces in the roiling grey clouds.

He thinks he can almost see one when he realizes his feet are no longer treading on the strange surface of Cosmos's realm. Looking down, he realizes he has begun to walk above the ground, following a glowing current of magic that he had not even realized was there before.

Auron notices this at the same time Sephiroth does, because he turns around and asks, "How did you do that?"

Feeling slightly embarrassed by his answer, Sephiroth can only reply, "I was looking for faces in the clouds."

"Whose faces?" Auron presses him.

"I don't know." Sephiroth wobbles on the current and quickly looks back up at the sky. He feels his footing solidify once again. "But it seems like that's the way to go."

Auron shrugs. "Well, then." He leaps onto the current and looks at the sky himself. "Lead on."


	3. Chapter III

**Chapter III**

Sephiroth quickly realizes that his progress along the glowing current of magic has little to do with the length of his stride. It is peculiar; the harder he looks for faces among the clouds, the faster he feels himself moving. After some time, he stops walking altogether while still searching the grey sky and finds he still moves.

"How are you doing that?" Auron asks.

"Haven't you noticed? How fast we're walking has nothing to do with how fast we're actually going. It all has to do with how hard we're looking for faces in the sky."

He looks over his shoulder to see Auron giving it a try. The swordsman stops walking but continues moving, his feet bearing him along the current seemingly of their own accord. "Do me a favor," he says after a moment, "and switch with me. I'm going to try something, and if it doesn't work I want you behind me to catch me."

"Fair enough," Sephiroth replies. He crouches and leaps into a reverse somersault that takes him over Auron's head, landing behind him without losing a beat. For his part, Auron stops looking at the sky and instead stares intently ahead at the horizon. His gaze still fixed on the clouds, Sephiroth bends his knees, ready to reach down to grab Auron if he should fall.

Rather than falling, however, Auron accelerates. He wavers a bit, catches his balance, and actually chuckles as he continues to pick up speed. "Sephiroth!" he calls, decelerating. "I think I've figured it out."

"How did you do that?"

"This current seems to respond to how you focus your will. Before, we were just walking aimlessly, with only a very general sense of where we needed to go. When you started searching for faces in the clouds, you must have summoned up the image of your mystery man on some subconscious level."

"I suppose so."

"I found that while I was looking for faces I kept almost seeing Jecht's –"

"So _that's _his name."

Auron mutters an oath under his breath before continuing. "I kept almost seeing his face, so I stopped looking for it and instead pictured it. The more vividly I brought it to mind, the faster I found myself going."

Sephiroth tries it with Genesis, picturing his face in his mind's eye. He remembers every detail of it, puts every strand of hair in place, gives him the smug grin he wears so often –

With a shout of surprise, Auron vaults into the air to get out of the way as Sephiroth barrels past him, streaking along the current like a shooting star. "Sorry!" Sephiroth calls back. "I didn't mean to go so fast!"

"Hold him less clearly in your mind to slow down!" Auron shouts. "Otherwise I won't be able to keep up!"

Sephiroth complies, though he finds it difficult to consciously leave out details of Genesis's appearance and manner. His memory has always been exceptional, and he wonders about Auron's. When the other man catches up to him, he asks, "Can you go any faster?"

"I'm holding Jecht in my mind as clearly as I can," Auron replies. "It's more difficult for me than it is for you."

"Why?"

"I'd rather –"

"– not say," Sephiroth sighs, matching speed with Auron. The swordsman is not going as fast as Sephiroth could be, but they're still making excellent time. "Why are you so reticent with details about yourself?"

"We may have to work together, but that does not mean we need to share every detail of our lives," Auron says. "I'm not that interested in who you are or why Cosmos chose you. As long as you're strong and we can accomplish this task she's set for us, I'm content."

"Well, excuse me for being curious."

"Very well."

Stymied for the moment, Sephiroth rides ahead of Auron in silence, his feet grinding along the current as long as he keeps a mostly-formed image of Genesis in his mind. Why this works he has no idea, but as long as it keeps them going in the right direction he can't complain.

They proceed in silence for what feels like the better part of an hour, the current climbing toward the clouds at a slow but inexorable rate. When they are within an arm's length of the clouds, Sephiroth decides to trust that the current will not take a sudden turn, crouches, and leaps twice his own height into the air.

His head rises above the clouds, and Sephiroth catches a glimpse of a starry night sky before everything goes black.

* * *

When Sephiroth is taken, Auron feels it happen.

He is focusing so intently on keeping Jecht's face in his mind in order to keep pace that his reactions are slowed. By the time he realizes what Sephiroth is planning, the younger man has already taken his leap above the clouds to scout what lies above them.

Then everything grinds to a halt. Auron is frozen, completely unable to move. By chance, he is stuck in a position where he can see the clouds, which were left whirling in Sephiroth's wake. They have come to a standstill.

He wants to laugh at the sheer absurdity of the notion, but he cannot open his mouth or even twitch a muscle. Then he hears the beating of wings, the sound of something grabbing Sephiroth and flying away. Focusing his will, he lets the image of Jecht fade and tries to make himself move, but his body stubbornly refuses to budge. The fact that he is viewing this temporal phenomenon from the inside must mean that his status as an unsent shields him from some of its effects, but not enough to free him completely.

The distant beating of wings begins to fade, and Auron swears inside his mind. He has a better chance of finding Jecht and killing Chaos with Sephiroth than without him, and he cannot just leave the man to his fate. Out of desperation, he tries to repeat the trick of the current, except this time he substitutes Sephiroth's face for Jecht's.

Instantly, his body accelerates and shoots up through the clouds, which part just enough to allow his passage before freezing in place again. It feels like he is being thrown through the air, but the momentum quickly fades and he has to let Sephiroth's face fall away and bring it up again to gain another boost.

_Interesting. This must be a phenomenon unique to this world, and the current merely makes it constant instead of fleeting._ Mustering total concentration, Auron repeatedly calls Sephiroth's face to mind and then blanks the image, generating burst after burst of speed and propelling himself through the air despite whatever magic is making time stand still.

It is arduous, but after perhaps a quarter of an hour – by Auron's reckoning, since his progress is actually occurring instantaneously – he begins to see his destination. What starts as a black speck in the sky resolves itself into a large castle, studded with towers and surrounded by a high wall. It hovers, motionless, though Auron doubts that it would waver even if time was not frozen.

He quickly reaches his first obstacle when he continues to think of Sephiroth's face and the next boost of speed slams him into the castle wall. He feels his body crumple against the wall, the force of the impact shooting through it, but he still cannot control his movements. It seems the trick only works in a straight line, because when he tries it again the same thing happens with predictably painful results.

There's no way Auron can get a new angle to try the trick from. If he keeps this up, he is going to start breaking bones, but if he stops he is going to fall, which will break even more of them, given the altitude he's at. He still can't move a muscle, which is irritating; using the trick during whatever spell is halting time seems to have freed his body from its effects, but not his control over it. Trying to figure out the particulars of this magic is making his head spin.

Fortunately, whoever is responsible saves him further deliberation by ending the spell. Auron feels its termination like a wave moving through space, only everywhere at once and nowhere at all. His control restored, he grabs his Masamune, pulls it from his back, and buries it in the stone wall to halt his descent. Gripping its long hilt, he waits a moment to ensure the sword's stability before pulling himself up and crouching on it like a small platform.

He thinks for a moment, then grabs his jug from his hip. Auron tosses it high into the air above his head and then visualizes it in his mind's eye, trying to duplicate the trick.

Nothing happens. _It must only work on people_. He catches it and returns it to his hip, trying to figure out the best way to scale the wall of the castle. They are sheer and smooth, impossible to climb. If he could build up sufficient momentum he might run up them for some distance, but there is no way to get a sufficient running start. An idea occurs to him when the thought of momentum crosses his mind, however.

He would not ordinarily choose so risky an approach. However, given that he can send himself hurtling back toward Sephiroth if he falls, Auron decides on a direct route. He drops off the Masamune, getting both his hands on the hilt, and begins kicking his legs back and forth to build up momentum until he is swinging around the sword in full circles. He waits until the crest of his next one, then wrenches the weapon out of the wall, letting himself fly upward, before burying it in the masonry again.

Auron permits himself a small smile. He looks down and estimates he gained perhaps five feet of height on that jump.

Only fifty to go.

* * *

One moment Sephiroth is jumping through the cloud cover, and the next he is coming out of unconsciousness in an unfamiliar place.

He is lying in a four-poster bed, beneath sumptuous blankets tucked up to his chin. His head rests on pillows which, from the feel of them, are stuffed with down. The room around him is decorated with all the trappings of what he perceives as classical nobility – several large dressers, an extravagant vanity with multiple angled mirrors, a nightstand to either side of the bed, a desk with a high-backed chair in a corner of the room. There are no windows, the walls are a bluish-grey stone, and the only visible exit is a pair of double doors in the wall directly opposite the bed.

Sephiroth throws the blankets off and realizes that his Masamune is nowhere to be found. Irritation flashes through him. Whoever's abducted him will pay dearly, that much he swears. He strides over to the double doors and throws them open. They reveal a long hallway made of the same bluish-grey stone. At the far end is a winding staircase up; the other exits are branching hallways, but Sephiroth wants to get to the highest possible point in order to survey his surroundings and try to figure out where he might be in relation to Auron.

As he strides toward the staircase, Sephiroth's mind is going in overdrive. Where is Auron, anyway? Whoever this mysterious abductor is, he or she had struck so fast that Auron couldn't have had any more time to react than Sephiroth had. Was he also a prisoner here? Though, come to think of it, he hadn't been immobilized or restrained in the bed, and so far he hadn't been opposed at any turn. Was he really a prisoner here, then?

Sephiroth mounts the stairs, which go up several dozen feet before opening up onto the bottom floor of what he can only assume is a clock tower. A long, wooden path spirals up from the floor in front of him and ascends at least two hundred feet before ending at a platform at the top of the tower. Between the bottom and top floors is a forest of gears and other clockwork, with multiple other floors forming tiers around the spiraling path.

"So good to see you're awake," a voice drifts down from the top floor, crystal-clear despite the whirring and clanking of the machinery. "Join me at the top, won't you?"

Knowing full well that his refusal will mean little if this is the same person who instantly snatched him out of the sky, Sephiroth heads up the wooden spiral, being sure to make a point of taking his time. When he finally arrives at the top floor, he sees nobody there.

"Hello?" Sephiroth calls. "Who are you? Why have you brought me here?"

There is a shift in space, the puff of air being displaced, and where before there was nobody, there is now someone standing behind Sephiroth. He whirls, dropping into a defensive posture as he does so, and finds himself face-to-face with a woman.

Her golden eyes are what he notices first, but he quickly takes in the rest of her. Silver hair that both thrusts out to either side of her head like a pair of horns and also falls in curling tresses to just above her stomach. A cruelly beautiful face, with red lightning-bolt markings above her eyes. A red evening gown with a plunging neckline that bares a good portion of both her breasts as well as her navel before closing just above her waist. Hands and feet that are grey and clawed. And two black wings sprouting from her back.

"Welcome to my castle," she says. "I am Ultimecia."


	4. Chapter IV

**Chapter IV**

Ultimecia encompasses the clock tower in a sweeping gesture. "Do you like my castle, boy?"

"I have trouble liking any place that I'm taken to against my will," Sephiroth replies. "Who are you, and what do you want from me?"

"I have already told you my name."

"Names are pretty, but cheap. What is your purpose here? Are you an ally or an enemy of Cosmos?"

"Cosmos? That dying goddess? I am no pawn of hers, if that's what you're asking," Ultimecia replies with a laugh. "I am an ally to nobody but myself – but there are many who serve me, and to those people I can be very generous." She reaches out a taloned hand and runs the sharp edge of a claw down his face, and Sephiroth swallows his instinct to jump back. He has to remain calm if he wants to have any hope of controlling the situation. "You asked me what I want, boy. I want the same thing anyone wants. To live as I please, to be master of my own fate, and to take what I desire, when I desire it. Is that so ignoble a goal?"

"Freedom is a good goal," Sephiroth says, "but how far does it extend? Is your freedom more important than someone else's? If you had an offer for me I would have come here willingly, but instead you kidnapped me."

She begins to circle him, her hand darting from his face to his hair to his pauldrons to his ear to his face again. Her touch is light, probing. "Yes, I'm sure you would have agreed to go willingly with the strange flying woman who came from nowhere. Besides, even if you speak the truth, your companion would have made trouble for us."

"Auron seems like a man with good judgment," Sephiroth says.

"There is far more to him than is visible at a glance," Ultimecia counters. "He is fierce, true, and loyal, but fierce toward whom, and loyal to what? You do not know anything about him."

"I know at least a little, which is more than I can say about you."

"All you need to know is that I desire your happiness." Her hand keeps darting from place to place, never resting for more than a few seconds. "You do want to be happy, don't you? For that matter, would you like to please me?"

Sephiroth waits for her hand to start moving toward his face again. Then he brings up his own, grabs her wrist, and channels the full force of his Bolt Materia into her. She shrieks and wrenches herself free with surprising strength, her smile replaced with a snarl.

"How dare you assault me in my own home!"

"There are many things I could accuse you of daring," he replies, "not the least of which is the spell you were trying to cast on me." She draws back another pace, clearly surprised, and he gives her a patronizing smile. "Did you think I wouldn't notice? You can clearly use magic in a way I can't, without having to draw upon Materia, but the effects are the same."

"You would have been happy!" she hisses at him.

"I've been under the effects of mind-altering enchantments before," Sephiroth tells her. "It was not pleasant. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Now, direct me to where I can find my sword and then allow me to leave, and I'll let you go."

"_You _will let _me _go? I think you overestimate your chances, _boy!_"

Ultimecia flaps her wings and takes to the sky. Sephiroth starts charging up another Bolt when he sees her outthrust hands produce a giant, whirling axe made of magical force and hurl it at him. He sidesteps, sees it slice through the metal floor like paper. He fires a bolt of lightning from his palm at Ultimecia, but she is no longer where she was, and the previously-empty air around Sephiroth is now filled with glowing magical arrowheads.

"This is my domain, my center of power," Ultimecia says from behind him. "You're a fool if you think you can beat me here with your borrowed magic and your righteous indignation, _boy._"

The arrowheads hurtle through the air, all converging on Sephiroth. He blasts a hole in the solid wall they form and leaps through it, narrowly avoiding being skewered. As he leaps, he twists in midair to face Ultimecia again, but instead of the sorceress he sees a pair of smaller magical axes spiraling toward him, now only inches from his face. Sephiroth lets loose another blast of lightning, letting the force of the spell hurl him away. The axes miss his head, but take a good amount of his hair off.

Sephiroth turns his head to see where his fall is taking him and looks right into a pulsing orb of magical power Ultimecia has hurled at him.

It explodes, sending him flying into a wall of the tower. The impact cracks the stone, sending bluish-grey shards flying everywhere. Stunned, Sephiroth groans and tries to force his body to work, but he can only slide limply off the wall and fall toward the bottom of the tower hundreds of feet below.

"You can't win," Ultimecia whispers in his ear as he tumbles. "Time is my plaything here, boy."

He falls, and he falls…

* * *

With a grunt, Auron pulls himself up over the top of the wall surrounding the castle. His body may no longer follow all the rules of a living thing, but he remembers his limits and this was a sore test of them.

He has no time to rest, however, because a shadow bursts out of the night and tries to cut him in half.

Auron brings up the Masamune in a hasty block and is sent staggering by the force of the blow. The enemy follows up with a thrust, which he also blocks, but rather than taking the brunt of the attack, he pivots until his enemy's weapon is scraping across the face of his own. His attacker will either have to withdraw, lowering his guard, or stumble forward and be completely defenseless.

Whoever it is takes a third option. There is a sound of thunder, a bright flash of light, and Auron can hear the sound of air tearing as a bullet rips through it. He stumbles back, afterimages clouding his vision; at the same instant he fires the shot, the attacker leaps backward, the recoil adding distance to the movement and placing him outside Auron's reach.

This, of course, means Auron is outside his reach as well. Auron exploits the opening and summons up Sephiroth's face. He immediately feels his body dash through the air toward one of the highest towers of the castle, the top of which sports an enormous clock face. _He's in there._

He hears another report, and manages to twist himself around and get his sword in the way of the bullet. Another follows, with the same result, and in the light of the discharge Auron can see his enemy. His attacker is a young man with straight brown hair, blue eyes, and a pale complexion. He wears a black leather jacket lined with fur, a white shirt beneath, black pants held up by several belts with a lion motif, and matching black boots and gloves. He wields a sword that Auron does not immediately understand – a long, vicious blade is paired with a curving hilt and a guard that the young man has his index finger fitted into, and just ahead of the guard are six cylinders set into and yet independent of the blade.

_Doesn't matter if I understand it or not. It can kill me either way._

In that moment, Auron locks gazes with the young man, and he realizes two things. Firstly, he is not doing this of his own free will. There is a cloudiness to his eyes, and his expression is slack, not the intense look of someone in battle.

Secondly, the young man knows the trick of faces too.

He comes rocketing after Auron at a speed much faster than the older man can match, twisting into a dazzling mid-air blaze of slashes punctuated by perfectly timed shots to hammer Auron's guard and keep the young man in the air. Before he even knows what's going on Auron has taken three wounds to his chest and there's a bullet lodged in his right shoulder. He swears, reminds himself that this is not his opponent's fault, and thinks of Sephiroth's face again, dashing even higher; his enemy comes after him.

Just as he expected.

In midair, Auron drops Sephiroth's face from his mind and instead brings the face of his enemy into full focus. He feels his body jerk to a halt and then immediately rush back toward the other swordsman, and as it does Auron brings his Masamune around in a curving sweep with the broad side of its blade.

The young man gets his sword up with astonishing speed, but it does him little good. Auron's attack bursts right through his defense and sends him hurtling toward the ground, which he smashes into with a thunderclap. Auron is fairly sure he can hear the sound of cracking bones, but he doesn't dwell on it. He brings Sephiroth's face to mind again and hurtles up toward the top of the tower.

Another dash brings him within bare feet of the clock face, so Auron begins running up the wall. The slashes across his chest are light and barely bleeding, but the bullet in his shoulder is radiating waves of pain, making it difficult to concentrate. He forces himself into total clarity, knowing that the next few seconds will be the defining ones if foes await him inside the tower. As he begins to lose his momentum, Auron bashes his sword against the clock face, shattering the glass and making a man-sized hole for him to leap through.

He gets a foot on the half-inch wall of glass and jumps onto a large, horizontal gear rotating below the clock face just in time to see Sephiroth slide off the far wall of the tower and begin to fall.

Auron starts to move toward him but realizes he has no control of his body. At the same moment, all the gears in the tower grind to a halt. Time is standing still again.

He sees a woman in red flying down toward Sephiroth on a pair of beating black wings. _She must be the one._ As she reaches him, time resumes for a few brief seconds as she whispers something in his ear, and Auron catches a glimpse of her face. Then time freezes again, and she holds out a hand. Magical energy collects in it and forms into a long, wicked knife.

Unable to move, Auron does the only thing he can think of. He summons up the brief image of the woman's face in his mind and lets his body do the rest.

* * *

"You can't win. Time is my plaything here, boy."

The next thing Sephiroth hears is a crunching sound. He looks up and sees, much to his bewilderment, a bloodied and battered Auron crushing Ultimecia into the wall with his body. Sephiroth realizes he can move again; Ultimecia's concentration on her time-freezing spell must have been interrupted. The woman screams and slashes at Auron with a knife, drawing a line of crimson across his face, but he grabs her by the throat and slams her head back against the stone before yelling, "CATCH!"

He hurls his Masamune at Sephiroth, who twists out of the way of the blade and grabs the hilt. A slash with the heavy blade reorients him, and then he gets his feet on the nearby wall and starts trying to brake, with little success.

"SEPHIROTH!" Auron yells at him. "THE TRICK! IMAGINE MY FACE INSTEAD OF YOUR FOE'S!"

As slamming into the floor at speed is his only other prospect, Sephiroth decides to listen to Auron. He pictures the older man's face in his mind – the scarred eye, the five o'clock shadow, the lips pressed into a disapproving line, the slightly crooked nose – and his momentum instantly reverses itself. He is sent hurtling back up the wall toward Auron, who is now being hurled away from Ultimecia by a magical explosion. Sephiroth laughs in spite of himself and repeats the trick with Ultimecia, and he rockets toward her, Auron's sword cocked for a killing blow. She seems to blur for an instant, but in that same moment Auron slams into her again, disrupting the time-freezing spell. Sephiroth can only conjecture that it doesn't affect his companion.

"NO!" Ultimecia shrieks. An enormous magical rune forms around her and explodes with white-hot energy, blasting Auron clear across the tower, but that gives Sephiroth the opening he needs. He gets a foot on the wall a few feet away from her and pushes himself off it, leaping over Ultimecia's head. Auron's sword is too heavy for him to perform any of his multi-slash techniques with, so he goes with a simple attack.

Sephiroth focuses on Ultimecia's face, and as he rushes down toward her he brings Auron's sword around to point directly down. It spears her right through the sternum, the blade coming clean out the small of her back without resistance, but Sephiroth doesn't stop there. He keeps focusing on her face, constantly propelling him toward her even though he can get no closer, and the two of them fall to the bottom of the tower together, smashing through every level of the wooden spiral path on their way.

When they hit the ground, the force of the impact pulverizes the entire floor, rips any nearby gears out of their housings and sends them flying, and even cracks the stone of the surrounding walls.

Sephiroth picks himself up, rattled. Even though he had leaped away at the last possible second to escape the destructive force of the attack, he still thinks he may have fractured both his legs.

Ultimecia had clearly managed to shield herself from the worst of the impact with some desperate magic, but she still lies bleeding on the floor, a sword through her chest, her body twisted and mangled in ways that are not compatible with a long life. Ignoring the shooting pains in his legs, Sephiroth totters over to her. "My _sword_," he gets out through gritted teeth. "Tell me where it is before you die."

The sorceress looks up at him and laughs, which quickly turns into a bloody, rattling cough. "The armory," she manages to get out. "Second floor." She coughs up more blood, smiles at him. "You – you would have been happy, boy." Her eyes begin to dim. "Such a…"

She never finishes the sentence.

Auron lands heavily a short distance away, clutching his right shoulder. "Are you alright?" he asks. Sephiroth turns to answer him, to put up a show of bravura.

Then his eyes roll up in his head and he passes out.


	5. Chapter V

**Chapter V**

"…pretty tough. He did a lot of damage with that attack and walked away with only a couple fractures."

Sephiroth opens one eye and looks for the source of the unfamiliar voice. It takes him a moment to adjust to the gloom. He is back in the same bedroom in which he previously found himself; the room is lit by a pair of candles on one of the nightstands. Seated at the desk, facing one another, are Auron and a young man he doesn't recognize.

"Fractures where?" he asks.

To their credit, neither of the other men starts at his voice. Turning to look at Sephiroth, Auron nods. "Good to see you're awake. You recovered quickly."

"You had hairline breaks in the tarsal bones of both your feet and both your fibulas," the younger man says. "A potion from Ultimecia's private stock fixed you up, though."

"Who are you, and where did you learn medical training?" Sephiroth asks.

"Name's Squall," he replies. "And they teach you the basics in SeeD. I know the names of stuff, know how to make splints and set bones. Not like I'm a doctor or anything."

"Thank you in any event."

Squall shrugs. "Whatever."

"He's a charming boy," Auron comments dryly.

"Hey," Squall says. "I owe you two for killing Ultimecia and undoing the charm she had on me, but we're not friends. I don't want your gratitude for repaying a debt. I just want to get on with my mission."

"And what would that be?" Sephiroth asks. "Cosmos brought both Auron and me here. Did she do the same with you?"

"Yeah. Told me she needed me to fight Ultimecia, since Chaos had brought her in from my world. Said I was the only one who could do it. Then I ran into a trap, got charmed, and the next thing I remember clearly I'm picking myself up out of a crater from this guy's attack."

"Sorry," Auron says, his tone not entirely sincere.

"Cosmos was obviously mistaken about your being the only one who could fight Ultimecia," Sephiroth observes. "Especially since I imagine you were as vulnerable to her time-freezing ability as I was."

"I don't know why she picked me," Squall says, "but now that Ultimecia's dead, I need to keep going. My ultimate goal is killing Chaos. Cosmos tells me if I can do that she can send me back home."

"In that case, we should join forces. Cosmos has told us the same thing."

"No thanks. I work alone."

"Don't be asinine," Auron snaps. "We have a better chance united than divided. That's the cold and simple truth. You may not like it, but you have to acknowledge it."

"Sure, but that doesn't change the cold and simple truth that I work alone." Squall gets up and brushes off his pants. "It was nice meeting both of you, but I want to get going. There's a lot of ground to cover between here and the Plains of Chaos."

"You don't necessarily have to work with us," Sephiroth tries. "We're headed in the same direction. We can travel together and fight our own separate battles."

"Problem is, the ground I have to cover is different from the ground you have to," Squall replies. "It'll be different for everyone, or so Cosmos told me."

"If we all have unique paths to take to the Plains of Chaos, then why did all three of us arrive at this castle?" Auron asks.

"I don't really understand it myself, but Cosmos tried to explain it to me and Zidane."

"Who?"

"A smartass. She said that her realm is stable, and the realms around it are pretty much fixed, but the farther toward the Plains of Chaos you get, the more things begin to change. Ultimecia's castle is pretty close to Cosmos's sanctuary, so we all ended up here. I don't know how long things will stay stable once we leave."

"Fine," Auron says. "Leave. If you insist on going to your doom alone, then I'm not going to waste energy trying to stop you."

"Thanks for that, at least. Later." Squall nods at Sephiroth, brushes past Auron, and leaves.

Auron waits a beat before sighing. "Between the two of us and that boy, I'm beginning to wonder if Cosmos collects nothing but damaged goods. If we meet an ally of ours who doesn't suffer from any severe personality disorders, I'll be pleasantly surprised."

"Look at it this way," Sephiroth says, gingerly getting out of bed. His legs are still sore, but the potion seems to have done them good. "He'll distract any forces of Chaos's that would otherwise hamper our way. And he seemed capable enough."

"On the other hand," Auron counters, "his very existence poses troubling questions. From the beginning I didn't think Cosmos was going to put her eggs all in one basket, but how many allies do we have? For that matter, how many exceptional soldiers does Chaos have under his control? And why does Cosmos not take the initiative, rather than only reacting to Chaos's actions?"

"I'm sure we can ask her when we see her again," Sephiroth replies.

"You're not interested in the answers?"

"It seems as though you need everything to be clear-cut, with a reason and rationale. I'm sure if the answers to those questions were important to our mission, Cosmos would have informed us."

"You think so, do you? She neglected to inform us of many things, the most obvious of which being the fact that there is a sorceress's castle between us and our target. Had she warned us about Ultimecia, we might have been prepared."

"True enough, but what if she doesn't know? If she could leave her dominion to fight Chaos herself, I'm sure that she would have rather than sending us out in her place."

Auron shakes his head. "None of this adds up."

"I know it doesn't, but worrying about it is not going to help us accomplish our mission. We need to focus on getting to the Plains of Madness, finding Chaos, and defeating him. We can worry about what Cosmos doesn't know and what she's not telling us later."

"A good attitude for a soldier," Auron says. "Don't question the brass; just follow orders and stay focused on the objective. My compliments to whoever conditioned you."

Sephiroth sneers at him, biting down hard on the wave of fury that comment elicits. "That's none of your concern. And don't talk as though you don't come from the military yourself."

"I don't," Auron replies. "I came from an order of warrior monks. The distinction is that while you were taught to think a certain way, I was taught simply not to think. As it happens, it didn't take."

"A shame," Sephiroth says. "Maybe if it had you wouldn't be so worried about things beyond our control."

"I could say the opposite about your attitude," Auron growls. "Though for someone who claims to be focused on the objective, you're very fond of asking penetrating questions about me."

"A good soldier knows as much as he can about his allies."

"And yet he knows nothing about the reasons or motivations behind the orders he's given."

"Knowledge of an ally can help a soldier accomplish his mission. Knowledge of a superior's motives in giving an ordercan botch it."

"Even if those motives are self-serving or destructive?"

"What a soldier might think is self-serving might actually be calculated for the greater good. You don't challenge an order unless you know for a _fact _it is treasonous, or will result in the loss of innocent life, or something else along those lines. I've seen people ignore orders because of doubts before, and I've seen those same people and everyone they needed to protect die."

Auron shakes his head. "We come from very different worlds then, Sephiroth. I'm not going to argue this point with you any further; we should be working together."

"Fair enough," Sephiroth replies. "Let's just both try to get this done to the best of our abilities."

"Agreed." Auron rises to his feet, heads for the door. "I was concerned for your well-being, so I brought you back here and searched the castle with Squall for a potion immediately after you fell unconscious. That means my sword is rusting in Ultimecia's blood. Care to accompany me while I retrieve it?"

"Probably for the best," Sephiroth replies. "No telling if Ultimecia has any servants or traps that have been lying dormant up to this point." He pauses, adds, "I remember you clutching your shoulder just before I passed out. Were you hurt?"

"I had a potion of my own. It's almost completely healed."

The two of them head into the clock tower to find Ultimecia just where they left her, sword and all. Auron grimaces as he walks over to her. He grabs the hilt of his sword, puts a boot on Ultimecia's chest, and pulls. The sword comes free with a long, protracted sucking sound. It drips half-congealed blood, a drop of which lands on her face.

"'Tis not a particularly respectful manner in which to treat any man's mortal remains, even that of a foe," someone says.

Sephiroth whirls around, gathering magical energy in his Bolt Materia as he does so. Standing in the entryway to the clock tower is an imposing figure, a man clad in full plate armor, pauldrons, and helmet. The helm has two downward-curving horns, one to either side, and every piece of armor has elaborate silver traceries inscribed upon it. A black cape completes his outfit. Sheathed at his waist are two swords, one the length of a claymore and the other the length of a shortsword. From the shape of the sheaths, Sephiroth can tell the blades are curved and single-edged like a sabre, but their thickness and obvious heft belie any further comparison.

At the sight of the power Sephiroth is gathering, the figure holds up an armored hand. "Hold you," he says in a mild voice. "I am not here to fight. My duty is to the deceased."

"Who are you?" Auron asks, not lowering his still-dripping sword. "Show us your face."

A sigh issues from within the helmet, and the man removes the helm a moment later. He has fair skin, short blonde hair, grayish-blue eyes, a flat, wide nose, and pale lips that seem inclined toward a grimace. "I am called Gabranth," he says, "and I am here for the lady. Hinder me not and we shall have no quarrel."

"What is your intent?" Auron asks.

"I intend to bear the lady's body hence," Gabranth replies, "and see that it is properly interred."

"Where would 'hence' be?" Sephiroth demands.

"The both of you are quite demanding. If you must know, there is a forest realm to which I've easy access. I shall take her there and build her a pyre."

"That sounds acceptable," Auron says, lowering his sword. "Tell me, though. Which side are you on?"

Gabranth replaces his helm on his head. "None, at the moment. Now, noble sirs, will you grant me passage, or shall it be war betwixt us?"

Without a word, Auron crouches next to Ultimecia's corpse. He takes his time wiping his sword on her dress. Then he returns the weapon to his back, nods to Sephiroth, and walks past Gabranth toward the exit. He pauses a few feet away from it. "A friendly word," he says without turning around. "Were I you, I'd lay the lady to rest and then find a quiet corner to sit out the current conflict."

"I thank you for your kind intent, but you may rest assured that I shall not harry your flank," Gabranth replies. He stoops, gathers up Ultimecia in his arms. "Well afore we face one another, you shall be informed of my approach." Light flickers around him, and his form begins to fade.

Just before he vanishes completely, he looks over his shoulder. "And when I do kill you, I shall not do it from behind."

Then he is gone.

"So nice of him to say that," Sephiroth mutters. "Can we go and get _my _sword now?"

Auron nods. "Let's get it and leave before any more portentous visitors show up. I've had about all I can stand for one day."


	6. Chapter VI

**Chapter VI**

"Where to next?" Sephiroth asks.

The two of them look out over the endless, roiling cloudscape from a battlement of Ultimecia's castle. Auron's mouth quirks up in a half-smile. "You expect me to have the answer?"

"An idea, perhaps."

"Squall said that the realms around Cosmos's domain are fixed, and the closer we get to the Plains of Chaos, the more fluid they become. That strikes me as fitting, but also deceptive: if the Plains of Chaos are on the far end of the spectrum, unstable and shifting, how can we travel toward them? It wouldn't be the same as traveling to a fixed point in space."

"So a straight line won't necessarily take us to where we need to go."

"Exactly." Auron leans against the low wall of the battlement. "There's clearly more to this place than one might think. The phenomenon of being physically pulled toward someone when you hold them in your mind's eye, for example. Who knows what other anomalies we might encounter?"

Sephiroth nods, then sees that the older man clearly expects him to contribute. "I think," he says, "you were right before, when we had that – disagreement. I believe in carrying out orders, but this is like trying to search a lake without being taught to swim."

"And?"

"We need to find another ally of ours, one who's less surly than Squall, and be briefed more thoroughly."

"That's fair. Do you want to go back to Cosmos?"

Sephiroth thinks of the goddess, careful not to picture her too vividly. "No. I don't trust her, despite everything. When I first woke, I could have sworn she was my mother. I saw through it, so she must not have been trying very hard, but I'm sure it was deliberate. She definitely wanted to get me on her side."

"I have no doubt she would have tried something similar with me, had her attempt to bring me to her domain not gone awry. So Cosmos is out of the question; in that case, who do we turn to?"

"About that," Sephiroth says. "Before we start making elaborate plans regarding our allies, I think you need to be open with me."

Auron raises an eyebrow. "About what?"

"First, Cosmos says she has trouble bringing you to her realm," Sephiroth replies. "When I ask why, you tell me you'd rather not say. That's fair enough, and I was prepared to let the matter drop since it's past, but there is clearly something strange about you. A time-freezing spell that worked with perfect effectiveness on me seemed to do nothing to you, and –" he reaches out and strikes Auron's shoulder, which elicits a grunt of pain from the man – "the potion you took from Ultimecia's supply obviously did not heal your wound."

Auron's good eye narrows. "A cold way to make a point, Sephiroth."

"But necessary," Sephiroth says, crossing his arms. "What are you, Auron? And be honest this time."

The older man sighs. "If you must know, I am not alive."

Sephiroth stares at him. Whatever he was expecting to hear, this was not it. Auron returns his stare until Sephiroth begins to feel uncomfortable. He breaks the silence by asking, "So you're undead?"

"Different. In my world, the spirits of the dead can linger on in physical form if they have unfinished business or are bound by strong emotion. They are called the unsent, and in rare cases they can be benign and harmless. Most, however, are malevolent and terribly powerful."

"So where does that leave you?" Sephiroth asks. "If you have such power, why take that wound at all? Why does Cosmos even need me?"

"I have no abilities beyond what I had when I was alive," Auron replies. "The power of an unsent comes from hatred and insanity. Most unsent burn with hate for something, whether it be a specific person or merely the living. Over time, that hate consumes their minds, and they become as beasts, what we call 'fiends.'

"However, the most terrible unsent do not lose their reason to hatred, merely their selves. As they become more and more disconnected from the world and what they were, their power grows, until they are unrecognizable to those who knew them."

"It sounds like a horrible fate," Sephiroth observes.

Auron nods. "Which is why I cannot allow it to happen to me. I stayed in my world after I died because I made a promise to look after a friend's son. I hate my killer deeply, as well as the order she created, but as long as I remember why I hate and what my greater purpose is, I do not lose myself."

"I see."

"Consequently, I am subject to most of the limitations of my mortal body. I do not need to eat and drink, but I can if I choose. I still need air, however, and I still bleed. My stamina is not boundless, and my strength is great but not superhuman. Healing magic from my world is effective on me, but there is some block here between the deeper magic and myself that keeps it from touching me. The potion _was _helpful, but compared to what it should have done, it was not even at half effectiveness." He rubs his shoulder. "The same with Ultimecia's spell. It did stop me from moving, but I was able to use the trick to follow you and slam into her while she was casting it, since it is a mental action."

Sephiroth considers this. "So it is a help as well as a hindrance."

"Indeed."

"Well, thank you for being honest. Now that I know this about you, we can take it into account for our plans in the future."

Auron starts to shrug, thinks better of it. "I do not usually like telling people. It causes… unease where I am from."

"I can understand why," someone else observes.

Auron and Sephiroth both start at the sound and look around for the speaker. Sephiroth spots him first as he ascends the stairs up to the battlement. The man is tall, lean, and pale, with aristocratic features and long, blonde hair. He wears intricately crafted golden armor with an animal's skull at the waist and two matching ones at his knees, golden greaves, and a purple cape that flares out dramatically at the shoulders, as well as matching gloves. Two golden horns extend from his head, one from either side, and reach almost as far out as his shoulders. In his right hand he holds a long, golden staff topped with a small sphere of the same color. Sephiroth notes that the man is not actually walking up the stairs; instead, he is floating up them, buoyed by what Sephiroth can only assume is the man's own power.

"Who are you?" Auron demands, seeing the newcomer a moment after Sephiroth.

The man gives them a sweeping bow from the waist. "Greetings, friends," he says. His voice is deep and rich; he articulates his words with controlled precision. "My name is Mateus, and I was traveling through this area when I heard your voices."

"I'm sure you were," Auron says, not taking his hand off his sword. "Whose side are you on?"

"I serve Cosmos, of course," Mateus replies. "Did Squall not mention me to you?"

"No, he didn't," Sephiroth says. There is something unsettling about this man, something that he doesn't trust. "Should he have?"

"I was one of his traveling companions, along with Zidane." Mateus sounds hurt. "It is just like him not to say anything about me. The boy is callous and disdainful of his allies."

"Squall said Cosmos explained the way to the Plains of Chaos to him and Zidane, specifically," Auron says. "If you had been there, I'm sure he would have said as much."

"Ah, but I was not. After she informed them of their missions, she directed them to meet me a short ways from her realm, where we would set out together on our quest to reach the Plains. However, shortly after the meeting, Squall insisted on striking out on his own and left without a word that night while we were asleep. Zidane and I agreed to search for him, so he went in the direction of the old Chaos Shrine and I set out for Ultimecia's Castle. I seem to have arrived late, as I cannot sense Ultimecia anywhere."

"We killed her," Auron says, beginning to relax a bit. "She had Squall under some kind of spell, which was lifted when she died. He then told us he works alone and struck out for the Plains himself."

"The boy is a fool," Mateus sighs. "A well-meaning one, certainly, but he refuses to recognize the strength of numbers." He shakes his head. "If he is gone, then, and insists on going at it alone, it seems futile for me to search further. I will rejoin Zidane and we will carry on to the Plains of Chaos together."

"Would you like us to come with you?" Sephiroth asks.

"If our paths to the Plains were along the same route, Cosmos would have no doubt dispatched us together. As it stands, the two of you can watch one another's backs, but Zidane has nobody except myself, and I feel responsible for him. Your offer is appreciated, but I fear I must decline." Mateus turns and begins to head back to the stairs.

"Wait," Auron says. "My companion and I were just discussing how Cosmos seems to have thrown us into a lake without teaching us to swim. We discovered a property of this world where thinking of someone's face physically pulls you toward them, which she never mentioned; there's no telling what else she didn't say to us. Is there anything else we should know?"

Mateus stops. "Zidane discovered the same phenomenon himself, actually. We have chosen to refer to it as a 'dash.' What's more, I have found I can induce the opposite effect – I can push myself _away _from someone by thinking of them, if I choose. It is simply a matter of intent; if you wish to get close, you are pulled, and if you wish to get away, you are pushed. Why it exists I can only guess, but I would tend to think that it has to do with the binary nature of this place. Order and Chaos, light and dark, good and evil. I do not know if there is anything else, truth be told. We have yet to discover other phenomena."

Sephiroth nods. "Thank you, Mateus. Good luck on your journey."

"The same to both of you." The man heads back down the stairs and disappears.

Auron waits for a minute until he is sure Mateus is gone. "He was not a servant of Cosmos."

"You could sense it, too?" Sephiroth asks. "There was something subtly wrong about him, something off-putting. Like looking in the mirror and seeing yourself with wrong-colored eyes."

"That, and the fact that he _adorned his armor with skulls._"

Sephiroth pauses. "I suppose that might be a sign, too."

Auron smirks at him. "There may be hope for you yet, Sephiroth." He gets a foot on the edge of the battlement and jumps up on it. "Come on. We're following him."

"Are we, now?" Sephiroth asks, following Auron's example. The older man leaps into the sky and a glowing stream of magic comes to life beneath his feet, stretching off into the distance. Sephiroth jumps after him, landing on the stream and picturing Mateus's face. He promptly begins to grind along the stream at high speed.

"My best guess is that Mateus came to check up on Ultimecia and Squall, found the one dead and the other missing, and decided to see what he could learn from us without giving away his true intent," Auron says over his shoulder. "The fact that he knows about Zidane, whoever he might be, is troubling, and probably means our enemies have him as well."

"You think Mateus will lead us to him?" Sephiroth asks.

"To him, or someone else who might provide some insight for us," Auron replies.

Sephiroth nods, then wobbles as the image of Mateus's face in his mind goes blank. He tries to focus on the man again and cannot. He feels the magic beneath his feet begin to fade away. "Auron!" he shouts, but then sees the older man is having the same problem.

"He must know we're following him!" Auron says. "I don't know how he's doing it, but he's blocking himself from our mind's eye –"

The magic disappears from underneath them, and they fall toward the clouds hundreds of feet below. "Quick!" Sephiroth says. "Think of Jecht, and I'll think of Genesis!" The two men focus on their respective foes, but find their faces gone as well.

"I know what Jecht looks like, but I can't bring him into focus!" Auron shouts over the sound of the wind blazing past them. "They must be under the same protection as Mateus!"

"Try Squall!" Sephiroth focuses on the image of the young, surly man, and immediately feels the magic rail coalesce beneath his feet. It curves sharply up, killing his fall and bringing him back onto a level course. He sees Auron do the same, and he breathes a sigh of relief.

Then Squall vanishes from his mind, and he starts to plummet again.

"This isn't just protection on their end!" Auron says as he tumbles after Sephiroth a moment later. "It's a spell Mateus put on us without either of us even noticing!"

"We can try Cosmos," Sephiroth says.

"Agreed, but let's wait until we're about to hit the ground. If the spell is reactive, it may block her from our minds after that, but we'll at least survive the fall afterward."

"And if it blocks her ahead of time?"

"Then we die."

"Great."

They hit the clouds a moment later and streak down through layer after layer of freezing mist. Sephiroth focuses on what's in front of him, resisting the temptation to panic and picture Cosmos. If Auron is right, they have only one chance at this.

It occurs to him a moment before they leave the cold embrace of the clouds that his assumptions about how high above the ground clouds drift might not apply in this world.

The next thing he can see is treetops, an enormous solid canopy of green, and they are far too close for his comfort. He brings Cosmos to mind, seeing her in minute detail, a second before he hits the trees, and the magical rail solidifies beneath his feet and curves up away from his impending death.

However, due to his panic or perhaps merely the enclosed space, it curves straight into a large upthrust branch. The limb smacks him square in the jaw, disrupting his concentration and sending him tumbling down through layer after layer of branches and leaves.

Nearly ten seconds later, Sephiroth hits the mossy floor of the forest with a thud. He groans, hauling himself to his feet just in time to hear crashing from above and spring out of the way of Auron's landing. The older man manages to stay on his feet, though the hiss he gives when he has to brace his landing with his right arm reminds Sephiroth that Auron is still injured.

"Did you hit a branch too?" Sephiroth asks.

"No," Auron replies. "I was right about the spell being reactive; only seconds after I pictured Cosmos, she vanished from my mind."

"Mateus is going to pay for this," Sephiroth mutters, rubbing his jaw. His hand comes away bloody, and he runs his fingers gingerly along his jaw until he finds a long gash stretching from his chin to the center of his left cheek.

"Agreed," Auron says. "For right now, though, we need to figure out where we are."

Sephiroth turns in a circle to observe their surroundings, which look to him like every other forest he's ever been in. When he completes his rotation, he turns back to look at Auron and finds himself face-to-face, almost literally, with a clown.

At least, the man looks like a clown – he is dressed in bright motley with predominantly red and gold colors, his face is painted white and his lips are outlined in purple, and his blonde hair is decorated with feathers and beads.

Then Sephiroth looks into his vivid green eyes and sees pure insanity.

"Isn't it obvious where you are?" the clown laughs. "You're standing on top of your graves."

He disappears in a flash of light, and Sephiroth sees a young girl standing some distance away, previously hidden by the clown's body. She is conjuring an enormous ball of golden-white energy, and before he can blink she hurls it at him too fast to dodge –


	7. Chapter VII

**Chapter VII**

Auron is already moving when he sees the clown materialize out of thin air. Therefore, when the girl who had appeared in the same fashion hurls a glowing sphere of lethal power at Sephiroth, the older man manages to get his sword in its way.

The explosion is stupefying. He blacks out for a moment, coming to as he lands hard on a bed of leaves. Struggling to his feet, he sees he missed a large tree by inches when he was thrown back from the blast. His sword is gone from his hand, and now there is a persistent ringing in his ears.

It fades within a few seconds, only to be replaced by hysterical laughter.

"It looks like Grandpa's taken a bit of a fall!" the clown says, hopping toward Auron. "Need a hand up, old man?" He extends a gloved appendage, his features stretched into a rictus grin.

"I'm not an old man," Auron growls before he hurls himself at the clown in a wild tackle. Both of them hit the forest floor, and Auron gets his hands around the clown's throat before he is blasted away again, lightning shooting through his body.

The clown stumbles to his feet, his hands still crackling with the force of the spell. "I'll _kill _you for that!" he snarls, sending a swarm of fireballs after Auron. The guardian, who manages to land in a crouch, throws up his arms in front of him in a last-ditch defense.

To his fortune, the fireballs never hit. Sephiroth appears in front of him and sweeps his Masamune through all of them, his left arm blurring with the speed of his strikes. In his right hand is Auron's sword, which he had picked up after the blast. The fireballs go up in miniature detonations, giving Sephiroth the cover to hand Auron back his blade.

"Don't lose it this time," he says, only half-joking.

"Thanks," Auron mutters. He eyes the girl, who floats in place, head bowed. "Well, how shall we do this? You can take the clown if you have issues hurting girls."

"You're so droll," Sephiroth replies. "A shame you can't kill people with your wit."

"HEY!" the clown shouts at them. "How dare you stand there and trade entertaining heroic banter while I'm trying to kill you!"

"We should take _him _out first," Auron says. "She doesn't look like she's inclined to talk."

"ARE YOU IGNORING ME?"

"I wonder how long we can stand here talking before he snaps."

"I HEARD THAT!" The clown punctuates his exclamation by conjuring an enormous shard of ice from nowhere and hurling it at the two of them. Both Auron and Sephiroth roll out of the way, then pause when the shard halts in midair and hangs there for a moment.

It explodes into dozens of tiny pieces of shrapnel which hurtle toward them, spinning in a whirligig of death. Sephiroth hits the ones going for him with a wide-angle blast of lightning from his Materia, which melts them before they find their mark; Auron simply rolls behind a tree.

The clown laughs again, a high-pitched tittering. "Not so high-and-mighty now!" Auron feels the back of his neck tingle; he dives away just in time to avoid the razor-sharp blades of glowing magic force that coalesce around the tree and tear it to shreds.

Sephiroth charges the clown, sword honing in on the madman's throat, but just before he's about to strike home the girl appears in front of him, an ice shard much like the clown's already erupting from her hands. Not wanting to kill her, he barely manages to avert his sword in time. Of course, this leaves him wide open; the shard crushes into his chest and shatters, sending him skidding painfully across the uneven ground.

"Thank you, my dear," the clown says to the girl, running a long finger down her pale face. Sephiroth, climbing back to his feet, takes the momentary lull to examine her more closely. She cannot be older than eighteen. She has fair skin, elfin features, flowing blonde hair, and blue eyes – eyes, Sephiroth notes, which are dull and unfocused. She wears a strapless, floral-patterned red dress, matching sleeves, long white leggings with a similar pattern, and red-and-gold boots with pointed toes and high heels. At her waist is a long, curved sword, which is still in its sheath. On her head she wears a simple metal band that is without ornament and contrasts with the bright colors of the rest of her clothing.

"How conscientious you are!" the clown laughs. "You might have had me with that strike if my lovely Terra hadn't gotten in the way. Are you afraid to kill a girl?"

Without looking, he throws out a hand and sends another bolt of lightning at Auron, who is charging at his flank. The guardian rolls away as soon as he sees the attack coming, keeps going without any loss of momentum, and swings his sword in a wide cut at the clown's head. The girl, Terra, steps in front of the strike, but Auron doesn't slow or try to divert his blow. Sephiroth feels his mouth open in a cry to stop, but before he can get it out a gale-force wind whips up around Terra and picks up Auron like a rag doll.

"Well, you're a cold one, aren't you?" the clown cackles as the wind slams Auron to the ground some twenty feet away. "No qualms about killing a sweet, innocent girl like this?"

Auron groans, but manages to get out, "I'm sure she'd rather be dead than your puppet, whoever you are."

"Call me Kefka," the clown says, giving a sardonic bow. "At your service – and they'll have to hold one for both of you after I'm done!"

"If you weren't already working for Chaos, I think I'd kill you just for that," Sephiroth says. He watches Auron out of the corner of his eye, waiting for the other man to make another move. _Kefka can only use Terra as a human shield against one of us effectively. We need to make an opening._

Auron seems to read Sephiroth's thoughts, because he charges again, running straight at Terra. The girl conjures multiple glowing orbs around her; they float toward Auron at an almost leisurely pace, but Sephiroth can tell that this is deceptive. Sure enough, when he comes within a few feet of them they hone in on him with a sudden burst of speed, shattering into miniature novas of blinding light that batter him about between them. For Sephiroth's part, he tries another bolt of lightning aimed at Kefka's head, but the painted psychopath bats aside the bolt as though it were solid and retaliates with one of his own. It twists, snakelike, past Sephiroth's guard and strikes his chest. Every muscle in his body tenses and then goes limp, and Sephiroth collapses to the ground in a tangle of insensate limbs.

Kefka looks at his hand, a confused expression on his face, then looks at Auron just in time to see the guardian, worse for the wear but still on his feet, bury the broad side of his blade in Terra's stomach. She goes flying; a splintering sound announces her collision with a tree a moment later. Sephiroth, still stunned from the lightning bolt, can only watch as wings suddenly sprout from Kefka's back, glow with power, and then stab into Auron's chest.

The guardian grimaces, but he somehow keeps his feet. With a shout, he brings his sword down on Kefka's head.

There is a flash, a sound of thunder. When Sephiroth can see again, Auron's sword is half-buried in the ground, Auron is standing there bleeding from his wounds, and both Kefka and Terra are gone.

With a great effort, Sephiroth regains his feet. Auron, confused, sits down next to his sword and leans against it, clutching at his chest. Sephiroth returns his sword to his waist and crouches next to Auron. "Here, let me see."

Auron bats away Sephiroth's proffered hand. "It's not that serious. I'll be fine."

"You say that now, but healing magic here obviously doesn't work on you. If you keep getting injured in every fight…"

"Maybe if you were a little more helpful I wouldn't _get _injured," Auron snaps. There is a moment of deadly, cold silence. "I'm sorry. I –"

"No," Sephiroth says. "Don't say you didn't mean it. I know you did."

"I wasn't going to say that," Auron says, his tone mild. "Of course I meant it. If I'm going to survive, you need to require less protecting. What I _was_ going to say is that by the same token of healing magic not working very well on me, I am less affected by offensive magic here than you. You are much more vulnerable to their attacks, and I shouldn't hold that against you."

"Well, I'm sorry I don't have your many decades of wisdom and experience," Sephiroth snarls. "I'm just trying to do the best I can, given the circumstances. Kidnapped out of my bed by a goddess who needs me to fight her war for her, paired with an irritable old man who I can't get off my back, thrown against people with magic that can freeze time and turn me into a lightning rod…"

"I'm twenty-seven," Auron says.

Sephiroth stops mid-rant and stares at Auron. "You're joking."

The guardian smiles at the flustered expression on his companion's face. "I know I don't look it. Dying will do that to a man."

"You're only _two years _older than me, and here I've been treating you like you were at least forty."

"You and everyone else." Auron removes his hands from his chest. "See? The bleeding's already stopped." He pulls himself to his feet with aid from his sword, which he then returns to his back.

At a complete loss for words, Sephiroth just rubs at his temples. It takes him a minute, but he arrives at what he should say next. "I'm sorry, as well."

"For thinking I was forty?"

"That, and – well. I've been letting you do the leading, not only because you were older and seemed to be more experienced, but because I don't want to myself. As you said, if we're going to survive, I need to commit myself to this. Fully."

Auron nods. "Apology accepted. And for the record, I understand why. It's never easy, being asked to fight and possibly die in a cause that isn't yours."

"It's not that." Sephiroth gestures at himself. "This sword, this uniform, they're from the people who raised me, trained me, gave me a purpose. I've been fighting their wars for their causes since I was twelve years old, and I used to be happy doing it."

"But you're not any longer."

"Genesis, the man Cosmos says Chaos brought here – we were in the same organization, the same unit. He deserted, and I have to find out why. Why would he be working with Chaos, for that matter? He was my friend. I trusted him."

"And his desertion made you question the cause you were fighting for?"

"I had already been questioning it. Now, I'm even more unsure. And then, to be plucked away from it all, told to fight him, and given only a vague reason why…" He trails off.

"It makes you uneasy. That's good." Auron puts a hand on Sephiroth's shoulder. "Following orders without question is one thing, and in some cases even admirable, but being willing to kill a friend simply because he's on the opposing side is not a virtue. I'm glad to see you realize that."

In spite of himself, Sephiroth feels a smile playing about his mouth. "I hope you realize that these inspiring sermons of yours are going to seem much less sagacious now that I know you're only two years older than me."

"Your loss." Auron rubs at his shoulder, which had given him trouble throughout the entire fight. "At any rate, I doubt we've seen the last of Kefka and Terra – the poor girl."

"You really think he was controlling her?"

"He must have been. Would you throw yourself in front of a strike meant for me?"

"…Do I have to answer that?"

Auron sighs. "We should see if Mateus's spell is still in effect. If it is, we should set off in pursuit of Genesis and Jecht again. If not…"

"It still is," Sephiroth says. "I tried to use the dash several times once I'd gotten a good look at Kefka's face. Nothing. However Mateus did it, we're grounded."

"Then we need someone who can dispel it. If we freed Terra from Kefka's control, she might be able to help us."

"That's a pretty big 'if.'"

"Do you have a better plan?"

Sephiroth just glowers at him.

"I thought as much."

"Well, do you have any idea where they went? Or even if they'll be back?"

Auron narrows his good eye. "They may have gone quite far away, but they _will_ be back. I'm sure of it. Kefka doesn't strike me as the type to let slights go unavenged."

"Cheerful thought," Sephiroth murmurs. "So, do you have any idea how we're going to fight them when they return?"

"We'll just have to improvise."

Sephiroth looks up at the cloudy sky. "We're doomed."


	8. Chapter VIII

**Chapter VIII**

"This is a terrible idea," Sephiroth says.

"Unless you have a better plan, this is what we're doing," Auron replies in a low voice. "They haven't shown themselves in hours. If they're waiting for us to sleep or otherwise relax our guard, they won't show themselves until we look vulnerable. If they've retreated, we're effectively trapped here, meaning we need to find shelter before nightfall. Either way, we need to get the lay of the land before we plan our next move."

Sephiroth sighs before continuing to climb the tree he's chosen. Auron, of course, has a good point, but it strikes him that scrambling up a tree to see how far the forest extends is a poor decision when two hostile mages could be watching their every move. If the guardian is right about Kefka waiting until they look vulnerable, the mad clown could attack at any moment now.

"What are you hoping to see?" he asks.

"A cave, a clearing where we can see things coming, the forest's edge – anything that's not more forest."

"I can get behind that." As Sephiroth pulls himself up onto a large bough, he takes a moment to run his fingers along the gash in his cheek from the branch he'd hit earlier. It's healing well, his enhanced metabolism knitting his skin back together at a rate many times faster than that of an ordinary human's regeneration. However, the thought of his metabolism coupled with the physical exertion of climbing reminds him that he hasn't had a bite to eat or drink in more than a day. Auron doesn't need either, but Sephiroth knows he only has another day or so before he needs to have some water at the very least. Even he is subject to the law of the stomach.

"Something wrong?" Auron asks, noticing Sephiroth's pause.

"Not really. Just thirsty."

"Hmmph. I hadn't considered that. You should have said something earlier."

"I don't need to eat or drink as often as an ordinary human. I can go for another day."

"Good. We can only hope the next world we're dumped into will have an inn."

Sephiroth can't help but smile at that thought. A comfortable room and a hot meal in bed do not strike him as thematically appropriate to the kind of epic quest they're on. "I'll drink to that when we find some water."

"Agreed." Auron pulls himself up onto another branch after testing its strength. "We're almost above the canopy now. Careful you don't take another fall."

"You just focus on not breaking any bones, old man."

"Respect your elders," Auron chuckles. He gains another branch, which brings his head above the forest canopy. Sephiroth joins him a few moments later.

The sun is beginning to set – to the north, Sephiroth notes. Moving carefully, he turns in a complete circle, seeing in every direction nothing but an endless sea of waving green leaves. When he looks at Auron, he sees the guardian's countenance has lost what little mirth he had been displaying.

"Nothing," Auron mutters. "Not even a break in the canopy that might be a river. Is this entire world nothing but trees?"

"It might just be a very large forest," Sephiroth points out.

"Which still does us no good. Nobody who can avoid it spends the night in the thick of a forest. Predators, poisonous insects, falling trees…"

"I don't think we have to worry about any of those things. Neither of us have seen any indication of animal life in the hours we've been here – no game trails, droppings, footprints, anything. As for poisonous insects, you're dead and I'm not susceptible to most toxins." He looks down at the tree, gives it a good kick for emphasis. "And I'm fairly sure that the chance of these trees falling from anything short of a magic spell is next to nothing. We should be fine."

A familiar voice drifts up from the ground a hundred and fifty feet below. "You mean a magic spell like _this?_"

In ordinary circumstances this might take them by surprise, but the two of them have planned specifically for this. Sephiroth's objection as they were climbing was not to the idea of getting the lay of the land.

It was to the fact that Auron's plan for ambushing Kefka requires them to jump out of a very tall tree to do it.

"Now!" Auron snaps, pulling his sword from his back. Sephiroth nods, leaping off his branch into a dive at the forest floor. He draws his sword, moving into a ready position even as he hurtles toward an unpleasant landing.

As Auron predicted, Kefka is still slicing through the thick trunk of the tree with a spell when Sephiroth spots him. "He won't be able to resist taunting us beforehand," Auron had said. "I can tell that about him. Trust me."

Now Sephiroth lines up his sword with Kefka's head and lets gravity do the rest.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Auron locked into a similar dive, pointed at Terra. The plan is to kill Kefka and incapacitate Terra before either of them can make a move. They have taken doing that and landing in one piece into account, but Sephiroth still has a bad feeling about this.

The bad feeling becomes justified in abundance when Kefka looks straight up at Sephiroth, grins, and gives him a jaunty little wave.

A moment later, Sephiroth smashes into an invisible wall several dozen feet above Kefka. He had been confident he could take the fall without too much trouble, but that was counting on a landing surface made of leaves and dirt, not smooth magical force. He sees stars and feels something in his chest crack.

Auron sees Sephiroth hit the wall, which gives him time to send himself into a spin and start gathering the forces for a tornado. However, Terra summons up her own storm much more quickly than Auron can call on his. Her tornado catches him and flings him away like a rag doll, dissipating his in the same instant.

Kefka watches the guardian sail in a long arc that terminates against a distant tree. Auron hits hard enough to send cracks shooting through the thick wood. He falls the last fifteen feet to the ground and lies still.

Sephiroth begins to struggle to his feet when the wall disappears from beneath him. He manages to land on his feet in front of Kefka, but the clown blasts his sword from his hand with a gesture. The Masamune whirls away from Sephiroth and sinks halfway up its blade into a tree trunk.

_This is not good, _Sephiroth thinks.

"I love a good ambush!" Kefka hoots. "Really gets the blood pumping!" One of his eyes twitches; Sephiroth feels an impossibly sharp blade slash across his shoulder blades, followed by the warm, wet sensation of his blood trickling down his back. _A shallow cut. He's toying with me._ "Of course, it's _your _blood pumping, not mine."

"You're insane," Sephiroth growls.

"What else am I supposed to be?" Kefka begins to float in a wobbly circle around Sephiroth, hanging upside down in his orbit. "One day I'm sitting around, plotting to destroy the world, and the next thing I know the God of Chaos wants me on his team! Is that the kind of thing that happens to _sane _people?"

"Mateus seems pretty well-balanced."

That earns him a fireball to the back of his head. The blast sends him staggering; Sephiroth swears and bats at his hair, trying to make sure none of it catches fire. "DON'T SAY THAT NAME!" Kefka shrieks. "That arrogant twit wants to rule this universe, which means he wants it to stay in one piece. Do you have any idea how mad that idea makes me?"

"I take it you don't want the universe to stay in one piece."

"Life is just a string of meaningless, stupid people bumping into one another over and over. There's no point, no meaning, no nothing! Anyone who claims to be 'rational' is a liar because there's no REASON!" Kefka punctuates the last word with a blast of cold that freezes Sephiroth's feet to the ground. He strains against the ice for a moment before breaking free.

"And how do you know there's no reason to anything?" Sephiroth asks. _Keep him talking._

"Why do _you _exist, warrior?" Kefka sneers. "Someone worked very hard to make you what you are. What was it for? Are you supposed to protect something, help someone? Whatever you protect is going to end up destroyed, and whoever you help is going to die. We're tossed screaming and bloody into the world just to suffer and sin and die, and we have the gall to keep pumping out more people to go through the same thing! Don't you want to just tear it all down?" He comes to a halt in front of Sephiroth, still hanging upside down. "Join up with Chaos and I promise you won't run out of things to destroy. We could have so much _fun _together!"

"Not interested," Sephiroth says. "I make it a policy not to be friendly with psychopaths."

Another blade of magical force lashes out of thin air and cuts Sephiroth, this time across the chest. "You're just as arrogant and stupid as the rest of them!" Kefka snarls. "People are walking sacks of meat that think they're 'important,' that they're 'special.' In the end, all you are is _dead_. Why shouldn't I have whatever fun I can? Killing you is no different than breaking a table or dropping a sack of really cute puppies off a cliff. You, the table, the puppies, all of it means NOTHING!"

"It's what you do with the life you're given that makes it meaningful."

"The only 'meaning' that anything can have is arbitrarily decided by more idiots like you who think that humans are special. Your naiveté makes me want to puke!" Kefka spins himself upright and points a finger, glowing blue with power, at Sephiroth's face. "The only absolute is destruction. You won't last forever – in fact, I don't think you'll last past the next few minutes. The empty spot where you used to be _will_." He grins. "But I don't think it's fair to kill you now."

The idea of Kefka showing mercy, however misguided, is strange, but Sephiroth leaps on it. "I'm fine with that. Let me just go get my sword –"

Kefka waggles his still-glowing finger. "Oh, no. You think I'm stupid? This isn't me giving you a fighting chance. This is me proving a point." Keeping his gaze fixed on Sephiroth, he calls to Terra, who stands motionless, staring at nothing. "Come here, my dear. I want you to do me a favor."

"You don't need to involve the girl," Sephiroth says.

"As though I need your permission! She's mine, boy. Whatever passes for a brain between those pretty ears of hers isn't in charge. I'm her whole existence." Terra comes to Kefka's side and stops, still staring at nothing. "Here's what we're going to do! Your friend's still out from that nasty blow he took –" Kefka laughs at that – "and I should just kill him in his sleep. But I'm prepared to offer you a once-in-a-lifetime deal!" He pats Terra on the shoulder. "I want you to rape her."

Sephiroth stares at the clown, not even bothering to hide his disgust. "_What?_"

"Oh, you heard me right," Kefka says, baring his teeth in a wicked grin. "You seem to have some pretty ideals about everyone being special and important, boy. Every life is precious, blah blah blah. You're going to deny all of it and treat her like the walking hunk of meat she is, and I'm going to laugh at you while you do it. Keep it up long enough, and your friend might wake up and have a fighting chance before I kill him too!" He breaks down into a long, whooping laugh, clutching at his stomach and bouncing up and down. His finger, however, never wavers from its aim at Sephiroth's face.

"I'd rather die," Sephiroth says.

Kefka stops laughing and his expression turns ugly. "Oh, no. You'll do it, and you'll enjoy it. Or I'll have Terra go and kill your friend right now, and if you try to stop her I'll kill you too. It would be no effort at all. I've hung a dozen spells in this area on top of the one I've got aimed at your face. You have no chance."

Sephiroth crosses his arms, looks Kefka straight in the eye.

"No."

"You're joking, but I'M! NOT! LAUGHING!" Kefka screeches. "DO IT RIGHT NOW!"

"I said _no_."

Kefka's face twists in the grip of murderous rage. "Terra, walk up to his friend and stick your sword in his good eye. I want to see it come out the other side." The girl nods and turns in Auron's direction.

"And as for YOU!" Kefka stops pointing at Sephiroth and makes a clutching motion with his hand. Sephiroth feels an invisible force grab him by the head and squeeze. "I'M GOING TO MAKE YOU WATCH!"

Sephiroth just smiles.

"WHAT?" Kefka screams. "WHAT IS SO FUNNY?"

Even though the spell is gripping him so hard his teeth are grinding together, Sephiroth manages to say, "Look at where Terra's going."

Kefka's head snaps around to see Terra calmly walking toward Auron, who is a split second away from slamming his sword into the already-weakened trunk of the enormous tree they'd climbed.

"Oh," Kefka murmurs. "That's cheating."

Then the tree, which is six feet thick, crushes him into the ground.


	9. Chapter IX

**Chapter IX**

"You cut it a bit close there," Sephiroth observes, rubbing at the slashes Kefka has given him. The wounds are shallow, the bleeding already stopping.

"I had to wait until I was sure I could move without him noticing," Auron says. "And I really was unconscious for a few moments there." He looks at the slight young girl standing next to the tree, staring at nothing. "She's quite powerful."

Sephiroth motions Auron over, and together the two of them heave against the tree until it rolls over a short ways. It takes very little deduction to confirm that Kefka is no more.

"Wonderful," Sephiroth mutters as he lets the tree roll back into position. "I'll be seeing that for a while."

"You're a soldier," Auron says. "I'm sure you'll be fine."

"Did whoever killed you take your heart as well as your eye?" Sephiroth asks. He sees Auron stiffen at that, and he immediately regrets it. "I – ah. That is…"

"You couldn't have known," Auron cuts him off. "It's fine." He moves to stand in front of Terra, looks into her eyes. "Kefka is dead, but she's not coming out of it. Do you think she's waiting for something?"

Sephiroth joins him. "I don't know." He passes a hand in front of her face; her gaze doesn't follow the movement. "Terra. Are you there? Can you hear me?" When she doesn't respond, he takes her by the shoulders and leads her around to the other side of the tree. A bit of Kefka's cloak sticks out from beneath the trunk, and Sephiroth tilts her head until her gaze falls on it. "Kefka's dead, Terra. You're free. Do you understand?"

Auron shakes his head. "Who knows how long he's had the girl under his control, and what that might have done to her mind? It's possible we should have taken him alive."

"Yes, because that was really an option."

"I'm just stating the facts."

"True. And now I'm just stating that there's no use in regrets." Auron looks surprised, then gives a small smile and a nod. Sephiroth thinks, then takes Terra's hand, holding it awkwardly between his own. "Terra, it's okay. Kefka's dead. You don't have to be afraid any longer."

Nothing.

"You're not very good at this, are you?" Auron asks.

"Shut up. Can you do better?"

"Unfortunately, no." Auron looks up at the canopy, watches the light beginning to fade. "We need to build a shelter of some sort before it gets dark. Let's take her a short distance from here, so she doesn't need to see that –" he waves at the fallen tree and the mashed mage – "and we'll make a tent."

* * *

After retreating from the scene of Kefka's death, Auron and Sephiroth quickly and efficiently gather up all the fallen branches they can carry, then bring them back to a large tree where they've left Terra standing, still staring at nothing. With keen precision, Sephiroth uses the Masamune to strip the bark from five long branches. He then shucks his coat, removes the SOLDIER belt from around his waist, and takes off of it the two leather straps that normally cross over his chest. He uses these to bind the legs of the tent to the spine, places it against the tree, and begins laying other branches against it to form the walls.

"This takes me back," Auron says as he hunts for two pieces of wood dry enough to start a fire with. "My Superior – the warrior monk equivalent of a sergeant – took us out into Macalania Woods, insisted we learn how to set up a campsite like this with nothing but what we could find. I must have been only eighteen or nineteen at that point."

Sephiroth makes a noncommittal noise as he layers leaves over the walls of the tent to help keep heat in. "My trainer from the Turks – a very dangerous group of people that work in parallel with my unit, SOLDIER – once did the same with me. The memory is not as fond as yours seems to be."

"Was it not an enjoyable trip?" Auron finds the second of his sticks, begins the slow and laborious process of lighting a fire over the small pile of dry leaves he's scraped together. "My troop had a good time, all things told."

"I was sent alone and unarmed, without even clothes, into one of the forests in the Central Continent and told to survive for a week. In addition to all the monsters in the forest, my trainer was also hunting me." Sephiroth pauses in his work, reflecting. "I was twelve or thirteen at the time."

There is a long silence from Auron. "That's terrible."

"I made it through alive, so it wasn't as terrible as it could have been."

"What about your trainer? I can only hope he's met a bitter end by now."

"Oh, he never made it out of the forest," Sephiroth replied. "It was unfortunate. He was killed by a band of wandering frogs."

"Frogs."

"We have to assume that, since the only part of his body they found was a foot in a small pond full of them."

"I see." They work in silence for a few more minutes until Auron has a small fire crackling and Sephiroth has completed the tent, such as it is. The entire time, Terra has stood in place, her face blank, her eyes distant. Night has fallen, and Sephiroth is beginning to feel weary.

Auron removes his coat and lays it down on the floor of the tent. "Go ahead and get some sleep," he says. "I'll take watch."

"Don't you need to sleep too?"

"Yes, but you'll need the energy more since you haven't eaten or drunk and I don't need to. Once dawn comes, we strike out again and just keep walking. After all, you can only get halfway into a forest before you start coming out the other side."

"I think my trainer might disagree with the latter half of that statement."

Auron chuckles. "Sleep well."

Sephiroth walks over to Terra. "You need rest," he says, not sure if he is reaching her but unwilling to give up. "Here." He guides her to the tent, then motions inside. "Lie down and sleep. You'll feel better in the morning."

Terra stands there, motionless.

Restraining a sigh, Sephiroth applies gentle pressure to her shoulders until she sits down in front of the tent, then gets her to lie down in it with enough nudging. The fact that she responds to physical stimuli is heartening to him, but for all he knows it might mean nothing. Any animal will move when prodded enough, after all. He drapes his own coat over Terra, leaving the spaulders sitting outside the tent, and crawls in as well, lying down as far away from the girl as he can in the confines of the shelter.

Eventually, he falls asleep.

* * *

It is the dead of night. Despite his best efforts, Auron is beginning to nod off.

"Yo."

The word sends a rush of energy through him, bringing all his senses to high alert. He grabs his sword, whirling to confront the newcomer.

Jecht stands at the edge of the firelight, exactly as Auron remembers him.

"Jecht!"

The blitzer grins. "Good to see you, Auron." His ragged blitzball uniform flutters in the breeze. "Mind if I come sit by the fire? It's pretty damn cold out."

"Cosmos told me Chaos brought you here," Auron says. "She said she brought me here in turn to fight you."

The grin stays on Jecht's face, but his eyes no longer smile. "She did, eh? Well, I can't deny it. I'm here working for Chaos. But are you gonna make me stand out here in the cold 'cause of a thing like that?"

Auron casts a glance at the tent. Sephiroth and Terra are both asleep, their breathing slow and steady. "If you promise not to disturb my companions, you can share my fire."

"Promise. I ain't here to fight today." Jecht strides over, seats himself cross-legged across the fire from Auron. "So, what brings you here?"

"We fell out of the sky above Ultimecia's Castle when Mateus somehow cast a spell on us that kept us from using the dash," Auron replies. "We don't even know where 'here' is."

"Ah. That's the trick, isn't it?" Jecht warms his hands. "This here's the Forest. It doesn't have another name 'cause it's the only one. Only one that matters, anyway."

"What do you mean?"

Jecht motions at the sky. "There's an old kids' tale in Zanarkand that every star is another world. Here in the Forest, that's the reality."

"If we have to travel to the stars to get out of here, then I'm afraid that's of little help," Auron sighs.

"I'm no good at explaining this sort of thing," Jecht says. "What I mean is, the Forest is kind of outside everything. That means you can get to it from anywhere, and use it to go anywhere you want – if you know the trick."

"And I suppose you're going to tell me."

"What kind of friend would I be if I didn't?"

"One that's working for Chaos."

Jecht spreads his hands. "You're pretty hung up on that, Auron."

"Let's not even start on the fact that your presence here means Cosmos had to kidnap me to be your opponent, leaving your son alone with his sick mother." He sees the distress flash across Jecht's face before the blitzer can clamp down on it, but keeps going. "Let's instead examine why you're even here. Were you given a choice? If you were, why didn't you say no? Why would Chaos even be interested in you?"

Jecht sets his elbows on his knees, clasps his hands together, and rests his head atop his hands. "You know what happened to me after the Final Summoning."

"Yes."

"Chaos came to me one day – sort of in a dream. He said I used to be a warrior for Cosmos, but he didn't want me fighting for her this time. He said he wanted me on his side, and he'd be willing to do me some pretty hefty favors in exchange."

"Such as?"

Jecht's hands clasp even tighter. "Getting rid of Sin. Forever."

"He has the power to do that?"

"If he wins this fight against Cosmos, then yeah."

"And what's to bind him to his word? He _is _Chaos."

"If I get strong enough to beat Cosmos, then I should be able to take him out too, since they're equally matched."

"That doesn't follow. If you defeat Cosmos, that makes Chaos stronger. Your assumption becomes useless."

Jecht shakes his head. "What other choice do I have, Auron? This is the only way to get rid of Sin that I can think of. The Final Summoning's a trap, and there's no way anybody can take Sin on in a straight fight. None."

"I know," Auron says, his voice low. "But you know I also want to get rid of Sin, Jecht. We have to break the cycle, and I can do that. When Tidus is old enough…"

"I don't want him involved if it can be helped, Auron. I don't want him ever to have to fight for his life."

"So you'd risk everything out of sentimentality."

"Yes."

Auron rubs at the bridge of his nose. "You know I can't agree."

"I know."

"We're going to end up fighting at some point, Jecht. And neither of us will be able to hold back when the time comes. It's not in our natures."

"I know." Jecht shrugs. "But if you win, we all go home and things stay the same. If I win, we go home and the world changes – maybe for the better, maybe for the worse. Either way, we'll be back where we can fix things."

"Indeed." Auron waits for a few moments before pursuing the other line of thought. "Now, you said there was a trick to navigating the Forest?"

"So far as I can tell, you and your friend have just been using the dash to get around. That works just fine, but the Forest leads anywhere you want it to. You just have to know where you're going."

"Even the Plains of Chaos?"

"That's the hard bit, eh? The Plains of Chaos aren't a place you can walk to. You end up there when you have nowhere else to go."

"That's irritating and vague."

Jecht gives him a sheepish grin. "Best I got for you, bud."

"And I'm grateful for it." Auron watches Jecht stand and turn to go. "One more thing."

"Yeah?"

"Do you know what Kefka did to Terra? We killed him, but she hasn't come back to herself. How can we reverse it?"

"What happens when you don't use something for a long time?" Jecht asks. "If it's a sword, it rusts. If it's a muscle, it shrinks. If it's your mind…"

"But a sword can be restored and muscle can be grown again."

"Then maybe her mind'll come back too. Who knows?" Jecht walks off into the Forest, giving Auron a wave as he does. "Be seeing you."

He passes behind a tree and is gone.


	10. Chapter X

**Chapter X**

Sephiroth wakes to the sound of Auron speaking. He realizes just how tired he must have been when he slowly drags himself out of unconsciousness instead of snapping awake. His mouth is dry, his lips chapped; he must have overestimated how much longer he could go without water.

"What is it?" he murmurs.

"I said it's dawn, and we should be on our way," Auron replies. "I know how we'll get out of here."

"How's that?" Sephiroth asks. When he tries to sit up, he realizes there is something pulling him back down. Confused, he rolls onto his back and looks to his right to see Terra curled up against his side, one of her arms draped across his chest.

That gets him fully awake. He stares at Terra, who is still fast asleep, wondering how he might disengage himself from her without waking her.

"Problem?" Auron asks, his tone mild. Sephiroth glances at the guardian; the lip of the man's coat hides his mouth, but his eyes are smiling.

"You think this is funny."

"Perhaps."

Sephiroth gingerly takes Terra's arm and moves it off of him to her side, then sits up and scurries out of the tent. The movement does not seem to disturb the girl, who sighs before turning back onto her side. He realizes a slight flush has crept onto his cheeks, and he forces himself to breathe slowly. For his part, Auron stands a few feet away, looking amused.

"Well," Sephiroth says, "this is a positive sign. We didn't tell her to curl up next to me. Clearly something's still going on in there."

"Indeed."

"Now, if we could just coax it out when she's awake, she might be able to help us."

"Absolutely."

Sephiroth scowls at Auron. "I can tell you're smiling, you know."

"Yes, I do." Auron looks at the girl, shakes his head. "We'll let her sleep a few moments longer. There's something you ought to know."

"What?"

Auron's smile, which was in the process of diminishing, vanishes completely. "Last night, while you were asleep, Jecht came to visit me."

"Jecht? Did you fight?"

"No, he just wanted to share our fire and talk. He told me that this place we're in is called the Forest, and from it we can go anywhere we want to as long as we know where we're going."

This is disturbing news. Even while asleep, Sephiroth hasn't been unable to hear the approach of an enemy in years. He must have been very tired last night. "Good of him. What's the catch?"

Auron chuckles. "You mean concerning the Plains of Chaos? Jecht says they're not a place we can walk to. We'll end up there when we have nowhere else to go."

"That's vague and –"

"Irritating, I know. But it makes sense, at least to me. And at any rate, we have several places we can go."

"Back to Cosmos, which is the exact opposite of the place we _need_ to go. Back to Ultimecia's Castle, which requires the dash to enter or exit. Neither of these are particularly enticing choices."

"There is a third option," Auron says.

It takes Sephiroth a moment, but then he thinks back to Mateus. "The old Chaos Shrine Mateus mentioned Zidane went to search."

"Exactly."

"We have no idea what it's like or where it is."

"It shouldn't matter if the Forest works the way Jecht says it does. We just need to want to go there and start walking."

Sephiroth rubs at his eyes. "Knowing of this place's existence would give any metaphysical philosopher nightmares." He turns back toward the tent to get Terra, then stops in his tracks when he sees the girl is awake and watching him. "Auron!" he says.

Auron also turns to the tent, surprise evident on his face. "Well, she's up," he observes. "Saves us the trouble of waking her."

Deciding on a direct approach, Sephiroth begins a slow walk toward Terra. "Terra, do you understand me?" he asks. "How are you?"

She stares, her eyes darting up and down him before settling on his own. Eye contact, good. However, she remains silent.

"We're not going to hurt you," Sephiroth says. "You're safe now."

"Says the half-naked man walking toward her in the forest," Auron deadpans.

"You keep that to yourself." When Sephiroth turns his gaze back to Terra, he sees she has begun removing the leather straps of his SOLDIER belt from the tent. By the time he makes it close enough to try to help, she's unwound them from around the branches and is holding them out for him to take.

"Thank you," he says, taking them from her. Terra gives no visible response, but instead stands almost at attention, her arms at her sides and her back straight. Her gaze, however, is fixed on Sephiroth's face instead of straight ahead.

"Well, this is certainly an improvement," Auron observes. "Sephiroth, get dressed. We should be on our way now that Terra's up."

It takes Sephiroth only a few moments to get his belt and coat back on. Throughout the process, he keeps an eye on Terra, whose gaze is not wavering from him.

"Do I have something on my face?" he asks after he secures his spaulders, not really expecting a response.

"It seems obvious to me what's going on," Auron says. "But I have been known to be wrong… occasionally. Care to venture an opinion?"

"Well, she's obviously got some form of post-traumatic stress disorder," Sephiroth replies. At the slight look of confusion on Auron's face, he says, "She's suffered a great deal and is having a very hard time coping." The other man nods, so Sephiroth continues. "But I'm not a psychotherapist. Even if this is the case, I don't know what I might do for her. Time is supposed to heal all wounds, but…"

"My guess is that Kefka's control was all that she knew for a very long while. Without it, she has no context in which to view the world. Suddenly, she has free will again. Does she even remember how to use it? Clearly it's coming back to her, but she's so used to thinking in terms of servitude that it colors her actions."

Sephiroth narrows his eyes. "You're saying she's latched onto me as a kind of surrogate Kefka."

"Possibly. As I said, I have been known to be wrong."

His stomach twisting at the thought of being a psychopath's substitute, Sephiroth glances over his shoulder at Terra. "Come on, then," he says. He begins walking in no particular direction. A moment later, the sound of her footfall joins that of his own.

He does not like this in the slightest.

* * *

They have been walking for half an hour when Sephiroth says, "Are you sure Jecht didn't lie to you?"

"I know Jecht," Auron replies, "perhaps better than he knows himself. He couldn't lie to me if his life depended on it. I am, however, unsure if what he told me was the actual truth and was instead the truth as he understood it."

"You mean one of his allies lied to him or brainwashed him?" Sephiroth asks. "But then how could he navigate this place?"

"I don't know, and that's the problem." Auron pauses, adjusts his sunglasses. "Do you suppose the spell Mateus put on us also interferes with using the Forest?"

"I hope not," Sephiroth says. "Because if it does, we're stuck here. And beyond that – if and when we get out, we'll have to fight him. And if he can get us in this much trouble without even waving his hand, just think what he could do if he _tried._"

Auron pauses. "Wait. Even if the spell does stop use of the Forest, Terra didn't have it cast on her. She should be able to get us to the old Chaos Shrine."

He looks at Sephiroth, who puts up his hands in protest. "I already have enough misgivings about this situation as it is, Auron. What if my giving her orders keeps her from remembering how to think for herself?"

"She either gets us out of here, or we stay here until the two of you die of thirst," Auron replies. "Or you might try telling her to remove the spell on us, for that matter."

Sephiroth shakes his head. "I don't like this."

"I understand your position, but I don't want to start making demands of her. It might just confuse her further, and she's clearly attached herself to you in some respect."

Unable to entirely hide his scowl, Sephiroth turns to Terra, who has maintained a distance of a few feet from him the entire time, still silent. "Terra," he says, watching her for any reaction and seeing nothing. "We need you to – no. _Could you _remove the spell Mateus cast on Auron and me?"

There – a twitch? No, a shake of the head. Miniscule, almost nonexistent, but there it is. A response.

"Good thinking," Auron murmurs.

Sephiroth ignores the guardian. "In that case, Terra, can you take us to the old Chaos Shrine using the Forest?" She gives him a nod, a tiny incline of her head that a casual observer would miss entirely. "Will you?"

Terra starts walking. She brushes past Sephiroth, who turns to follow her passage –

When he completes his turn, he is no longer standing in the Forest. He, Terra, and Auron are on an enormous platform of dark stone, seemingly ripped straight out of a castle or similar structure. The platform hurtles through an endless void of swirling purple and black. When Sephiroth looks around, he sees a ramp at the far end of the platform that slants up before being cut off by the edge. On either side of the ramp is a statue of a demonic form, the features worn to smoothness by what must be centuries of exposure.

"Below us," Auron says. Sephiroth looks down, sees that what he took to be the floor of the platform is actually a partially-opened roof over an enormous hollow chamber below. A long, purple carpet with gold trim runs along the length of the room, leading up to a ramp much like the one atop the platform. However, this ramp terminates in a throne. Twin rows of pillars on a raised level stretch across each side of the room, some of them partially demolished.

"Strange shrine," Sephiroth observes. He pauses, looks at Terra. "Thank you."

Auron raises an eyebrow, but decides against saying anything. Clearly, Sephiroth has some idea of what he's doing; best to leave him to his own devices when it comes to the girl. "Are we alone here? I find the idea doubtful."

"Yes, because I wasn't anywhere near tired of how things were going before," Sephiroth says. "Nobody here to try to take over my mind, put a spell on me, electrocute me, or slash me to death? I'm disappointed."

"Of course you are. Mateus may have just been lying when he said Zidane came here looking for Squall, but I think he was trying to tell the truth as much as possible. Still, if Zidane _did _come here, this is a very small… world. I don't imagine he would have spent long looking."

"Maybe there's something we're missing. Could there be more to this place?" Sephiroth asks.

Auron shakes his head. "This is frustrating. We may be pawns, but even pawns can usually see the other end of the chessboard. Yet here we are, being asked to get to a place we can't see, moving through disparate worlds with no relation to one another, some of which aren't even larger than a fort."

"Don't worry. You're not going to be alive long enough to worry any longer."

Sephiroth and Auron exchange glances. Nobody else is visible at the Chaos Shrine, but they _are _standing atop the roof of a throne chamber, a roof that is not particularly thick.

So Auron does the practical thing. In one motion, he pulls his sword from his back and slams it into the stone beneath their feet.

The roof shatters. As they begin to drop, they hear an undignified squeal when the debris from Auron's attack rains down on whoever thought it clever to hover beneath them, hidden by a thin layer of stone. Terra, thankfully, is far enough away from the two of them that the ground under her feet does not collapse.

Sephiroth takes the thirty-foot drop with ease, tucking into a roll as he lands. Auron pushes off a large piece of debris, propelling himself to the side of the room. There he gets an arm partway around one of the pillars, taking the rest of the descent in a controlled slide.

The two of them watch as their would-be ambusher extricates himself from the pile of rubble that now adorns the center of the throne room. It is a young man, with long silver hair accentuated by a large feather stuck between his bangs. He has bluish-grey eyes, haughty, aristocratic features, and pale skin. A purple jacket with gold trim covers his shoulders and chest, leaving his midriff bare. Around the back of his waist, extending down to his ankles, he wears a white cloak held in place by four straps that also serve to secure the codpiece that covers his groin. His legs are covered up to mid-thigh by purple leggings, and on his feet he wears matching, pointed boots with gold buckles.

"Wonderful," Auron says. "Another insane one."

With an ugly look, the young man dusts himself off and points a finger at Auron. "On the contrary, friend. You'll find I'm entirely in possession of my faculties, and secure in this knowledge I can say you will regret this gross indignity."

"As long as you leave the codpiece on," Sephiroth says, drawing his sword.

That earns him a truly murderous glare. "You will _both _regret this, but not now. I'm not foolish enough to try to take both of you without the element of surprise –"

"Perhaps you shouldn't have spoken before attacking?" Auron suggests.

His remark goes unacknowledged. "So here are some puppets for you to rehearse with." The young man snaps his fingers. Two white bursts of light appear, one on either side of him, and when they fade he is flanked by two crystalline, monochromatic beings that bear more than a passing resemblance to him. "Play nice," he says before vanishing in a similar burst of light.

"What a charming fellow," Auron says. "Shall we?"

The creatures wave their hands. Five points of white light blossom into being around each of them, and they charge.


	11. Chapter XI

Hello again, good readers. I apologize for the lack of updates and review replies this past week; it was Spring Break and I was in no condition to write anything. With that out of the way, though, we return to our regularly scheduled fic. Enjoy!

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**Chapter XI**

Sephiroth lashes out at the creature charging him, the speed of his strike turning the Masamune to a silvery blur. With astonishing speed, his foe – a purple, crystalline facsimile of the young man that summoned it – crosses its arms in front of its face. The five orbs of light that surround it become streaks that flash forward to intercept Sephiroth's attack. They bat his sword out of the way and then radically shift direction, coming at him in a twisting spiral. Uninterested in finding out exactly what effect they will have on him, Sephiroth rolls out of the way, using the movement to bring his sword back around for another strike.

Even as the creature's lights rush through the space where Sephiroth's head had been, it points a finger at him. The air around him grows hot; Sephiroth gathers his strength and leaps into the air in time to avoid a large explosion. The energy forms a perfect sphere, glowing gold at its center and fading to a deep black at its edges. Sephiroth twists as he falls, slashing out in a flurry of blows both to ward off the orbs of light and to slice off his enemy's arms.

It leaps out of the way, displaying surprising agility, and takes to the air, its orbs trailing after it. Sephiroth watches it fly up in a series of increasingly-broad circles, gaining altitude for an aerial assault. He rushes toward the nearest pillar, pushes off the floor, begins to run up the side. He'd noticed before when he and Auron fell, but now it is even more apparent that this world has little gravity to speak of – less than half of what he's used to. When he reaches the top of the pillar, he pushes off in a flying leap toward his opponent, who attacks with its orbs again, this time in a zig-zag pattern that crosses over and through itself at high speed, creating a kind of grinder in mid-air.

Rather than try to force his way through, Sephiroth sights an opening and fires a lightning bolt straight through the crisscrossing orbs. The bolt hits his enemy square in the chest, sending it flying, and its orbs go into disarray and flee back toward it. As gravity begins to reassert itself, Sephiroth searches the ground below him to see Auron furiously batting aside similar attacks from his own foe, unable to get an opening.

He glances up just in time to see Sephiroth descend on the creature like a judgmental angel. The Masamune stabs down through its head, into its torso, and out its stomach as Sephiroth lands. For a moment, the creature staggers, cracks spreading through its crystalline form. Then it explodes into fine purple fragments which glitter as they slowly fall to the ground.

"Thanks," Auron says. "Where'd yours go?"

"It went flying after I hit it with a lightning bolt," Sephiroth replies. "But I think it should be back by –"

The conclusion comes to him in the same moment as Auron. Without another glance, the two of them leap and run up adjacent pillars, then pull themselves onto the upper level of the shrine. Sephiroth's enemy floats high in the air. It is tracking Terra, who is retreating as fast as she can run, with a chain of gold-and-black explosions while its orbs harry her, swooping and diving in an attempt to get around her beleaguered magical guard.

Sephiroth tries another lightning bolt, but the creature sees him casting it and pulls its orbs in. The bolt dissipates harmlessly against the shield they form a moment before an explosion blossoms between Sephiroth and Auron. It sends Sephiroth staggering back, his vision blurring, into another one, which sends him into another –

Auron sees Sephiroth being thrown around like a rag doll, but when he tries to reach his companion the orbs rush him, each spinning so fast that it blurs into a pulsing white ring. He sweeps two of them away, ducks the third, takes the fourth and fifth in his chest. They burn with intense power; he feels like he's been punched by hands of flame. As he watches, the three orbs that missed him swoop back toward the enemy, while new fourth and fifth orbs blossom into existence to either side of it.

Without thinking, Auron seizes the brief opening. He spits on his blade, focuses on feelings of weakness and impotence. Reddish-gold streaks of power ripple along the length of his sword, some of them breaking free and whirling around the weapon in decaying orbits before returning to the steel. The glow intensifies until it is painful to look at. As the creature hurls its orbs at him again, Auron slams his blade into the ground, where the power he's built up bleeds into the stone before erupting into the air as four black spheres, each of them emblazoned with a glowing red Spiran glyph.

This time he takes all five orbs in the chest. The pain is so intense that he actually blacks out for a moment, but his senses return in time to see the creature, which has been left completely open by its offensive, clutch at itself in obvious pain as his attack sinks into its chest in a fountain of midnight-black energy.

For his part, Sephiroth staggers forward from yet another explosion. He braces himself for another but nothing comes; surprised but unwilling to question the reversal of his fortunes, he fights through the haze of pain and forces himself to focus on the creature.

His surprise only increases when he sees it begin to claw at its own chest. A moment later its scream pierces the air – a horrible, anguished noise that sounds oddly flat and distorted, as though he is hearing it through a bad phone line.

"What did you do?" he tries to ask, but the words come out unintelligible, probably because of all the blood in his mouth. He spits, wipes at his face, tries to ignore just how much blood comes away on his arm. "What did you do?"

"It's an attack I call Banishing Blade," Auron replies. The guardian is hunched, his free arm cradling his chest; he must have taken a beating as well. "It saps the power of its target."

Sephiroth eyes the creature, which is currently ripping chunks out of its own chest, screaming all the while. "Is that all."

"I think its dramatic effect here is because this creature is nothing _but _power. You would feel your strength being sapped, but you would fight it off eventually. This thing has no will, so it can't stop the drain. A good thing to know."

As though to punctuate Auron's statement, the creature loses all cohesion, shattering into a rain of purple crystal.

Sephiroth spits out more blood, which he determines is coming from a large gash in his tongue. He must have bitten down on it while he was being tossed around like a doll by the explosions. His nose is also bleeding; one of the blasts had gone off right in front of his face. "Why haven't you used this before? It seems like it could have been useful."

"You're right, and I apologize. I should have used my _magical_ attack against the dark masters of the arcane we've been fighting."

"Point taken. Still…"

Auron shrugs. "I wouldn't have used it here, except for the fact that it's the only way I can hit a flying enemy without being able to jump after them. Fortuitous that our enemy chose to force my hand, I suppose." He looks at Sephiroth's nose and the bloody sputum the younger man has left on the rocks. "We need to leave before our real enemy returns. If these facsimiles of him gave us this much trouble…"

Sephiroth casts his gaze around for Terra. He spots the girl easily enough – she is crouched behind one of the statues adjacent to the ramp at the far end of the shrine, covering her head with her hands. "Terra!" he calls. "It's all right! You can come out now!"

He watches her stand up, but as she begins moving back toward the two of them, the ground beneath her feet lights up and electricity crawls across her skin. All the muscles in her body tense for a moment, then she slumps to the ground as the light fades.

Both of them immediately dash toward her, but they are brought up short when the ground in front of them begins to glow. They skid to a halt, turn and see that they are now surrounded by the glow, which hems them into a small circle.

"What is this?" Auron growls.

"Think we can jump it?" Sephiroth asks.

"I would not advise it," a familiar voice says.

Sephiroth turns back around to see Mateus floating in front of them, just outside the circle of light. "You people seem to be obsessed with appearing behind us and saying pithy things."

Mateus gives him a small smile. "It is an effective mode of getting one's point across. You cannot deny that."

"You led us here," Auron says. "You knew without the dash we'd fall into the Forest, and from there we'd have nowhere new to go except for this one place you 'happened' to mention in our conversation."

Mateus examines the fingernails of his left hand. "Perhaps. I also may have let knowledge of your eventual presence here slip to Kuja, who is far too eager to prove his worth. I knew he would at least distract the both of you, giving me plenty of time to set up this snare."

"Everyone we've encountered on the side of Chaos has shown that they can move between the worlds without any effort," Sephiroth says. "Why didn't you attack us in the Forest, if you knew we'd end up there?"

"Because that is Kefka's territory, or at least it was until you dropped a tree on him. He was a lunatic and a loose cannon; he might have objected to another one of us being present there as much or more than to the presence of a pawn of Cosmos. You actually did us a favor by killing him. Chaos certainly has an eye for effective servants, but in Kefka's case I think he chose rather too well."

"Enough," Auron says. "What do you want? It's clear you went to no small amount of effort to ensure we'd end up here. I'm sure you could have killed us by now, but you've instead trapped us. We have something you want, and it's not something that you can merely take."

Mateus cocks his head. "You are a perceptive one. Yes, as a matter of fact there _is _something I want from you. I chose this particular location for our conversation because it is far from the eyes and ears of my fellows – far too close to Order's Sanctum for most of them. Ultimecia was the only one of us who was confident that proximity to Cosmos would not spell her undoing, and we all know how that went for her."

"Get to the point," Sephiroth says.

"Fair enough." Mateus begins to float back and forth, pacing without actually moving his legs. "It is Chaos's intent to destroy Cosmos and plunge the universe into a primordial state of existence incompatible with life, or at least intelligent life. This same battle has been fought many times before, but it has always ended in a stalemate because when it comes down to it Cosmos and Chaos are equally matched. So they chose proxies to fight in their stead – pawns, warriors, heroes, whatever you want to call us. Our struggles, and how we fare, directly feed the power of our respective leaders. Past conflicts have not swayed the balance of power far enough to either side to make a substantial difference, but each time, both Cosmos and Chaos summon more powerful warriors and amass greater armies. They are getting better at this new version of the game, and eventually it will spell the doom of reality."

"More sacrifices," Auron says, his lip twisting. "Us on the altar of Chaos if we fail, and our enemies on the altar of Cosmos when we defeat them."

"Precisely. Now, Cosmos does not want to extinguish all life as Chaos does, but it is her very nature to wish to control it. Indeed, that is what she _is. _So we are faced with creation being spent in the service of these gods, utter annihilation, or complete subjugation. None of these outcomes are appealing to me."

"I can understand why."

"So what do you plan to do?" Sephiroth asks.

"Simple," Mateus replies. "Make Cosmos and Chaos invest themselves personally in the fight. If they invest enough of their power in their warriors, those same warriors can then turn on them and bring an end to this destructive conflict. Cosmos and Chaos are the incarnations of their respective concepts; by destroying them, we are merely removing causality from the hands of the forces it should manipulate, thereby restoring the natural balance of existence."

"Sounds like a noble goal. It doesn't strike me as something you'd do," Sephiroth says.

Mateus shrugs. "You know very little about me, boy. But to make things perfectly clear, I want to do this because I do not wish to die or be ruled over. You understand?"

"I understand perfectly," someone new says to Mateus.

The golden-armored mage whirls to find himself face-to-face with Gabranth.

"See?" Sephiroth asks. "It's irritating the way you just pop out of nowhere."

Gabranth ignores him. "I knew it was an ill choice to place any trust in you, Mateus," he says. "You have made an enemy of me, and by extension, of Chaos."

Before Mateus can say anything, Kuja appears in a flash of light. He hovers above all of them, orbs of light whirling around him in a frenzy. "I knew it! None of you respect me enough to let me deal with these interlopers in my own fashion!"

"Chaos's forces turn on one another," Auron murmurs. "I must confess I'm not terribly surprised."

"Stay out of this, Kuja," Mateus says. "You've served your purpose."

"You used me!"

"Can you blame me when you're so very easy to manipulate?"

"Ignore me at your own peril," Gabranth warns Mateus, his hands resting on his swords. "Acknowledge the futility of your situation, and I may yet accept your surrender."

"On three," Sephiroth murmurs to Auron, "we make a break for it."

Before he can start counting, however, a shrill cry pierces the air, and both of them look past Mateus and Gabranth just in time to see Terra scrambling backward along the stone ground, trying to get away from a squad of more of the crystalline creatures. These are a dark gold and have Gabranth's features.

The shriek is all the distraction anyone needs. Sephiroth and Auron leap out of the circle of light, Mateus hurls a bolt of energy at Gabranth, Kuja charges toward Mateus, his orbs whirling around him, Gabranth rips his swords from their sheaths with a roar, and the battle is joined.


	12. Chapter XII

**Chapter XII**

Kefka and Gabranth both come to a sudden halt, electricity crackling up and down their bodies as the ground beneath their feet glows with the same light as Mateus's other traps. Across the shrine, the golden creatures with Gabranth's form all halt, seeming confused. Mateus looks at Auron and Sephiroth. "Even if you don't believe everything I've told you, believe me when I say that I can only hold them for a few more moments and that you two cannot fight them as you are. Will you agree to a truce if I release the spell I put on your powers?"

"Powers?" Sephiroth asks.

Mateus glares, obviously having trouble maintaining his spell, but explains. "I didn't just remove your ability to use the dash. I also put a sap on your strength. I'm sure you've felt the effects by now. Enemies hit you harder, they stand up better to your attacks…" He grimaces. "It affected you more than your friend because of his unique nature. Now, _are we agreed?_"

"Yes!" Auron snaps. "Do it!"

Mateus snaps his fingers, and Sephiroth feels an invigorating rush of what he can only describe as pure power. He gasps when it hits him, the force of it is so intense. Had he been this affected and not even realized it? Mateus is far more dangerous than he'd originally estimated.

With a thought, he sends himself hurtling toward Gabranth, slicing out with the Masamune as he shoots through the air. "Take Kuja! I've got Gabranth!" he calls as his weapon slams into both of Gabranth's. "Mateus, help Terra!" He can almost feel the sorcerer's indignant stare, but a moment later he sees the man's golden form rush toward the Gabranth lookalikes, his staff glowing with power.

"Eyes on your opponent, boy!" he hears a moment before Gabranth disengages their weapons with a sudden push and follows up with a vicious thrust at Sephiroth's head. Without thinking, Sephiroth slides out of the way, slashing low at Gabranth's waist. The Masamune slams into Gabranth's armor, sending the warrior skidding back, and Sephiroth smirks as he puts more pressure on the blade. Even from six feet away, he can feel his sword cutting into the steel plate, driving inexorably closer to Gabranth's liver.

For his part, Gabranth takes Sephiroth's sudden increase of power in stride. With a twist of his smaller blade, he rips the Masamune out of his armor, then slams it to the ground, where he stomps his boot down on it. Sephiroth gives a tug, but the blade is stuck fast. Gabranth steps to the side, lashing out with his larger blade in a vicious sideswipe as he does. The impact wrenches the Masamune out of the stone, but Sephiroth anticipates the move. He puts the momentum into a twist that pulls him around in an arcing swing that closes in on Gabranth.

When Sephiroth comes to face his enemy again, however, Gabranth has closed the distance between them with a quick dash of his own and is thrusting his smaller sword straight at Sephiroth's face. Sephiroth ducks, but that takes him into the reverse pommel strike that Gabranth is aiming at his groin. He instinctively twists with the impact, turning the attack along his ribcage, which negates the brunt of the blow. Even so, Gabranth's strength is inhuman, pushing Sephiroth back. He retreats into a reverse roll that gives him distance, taking him out of range of the follow-up swipe that Gabranth aims at his throat. Now he has room to maneuver.

Sephiroth starts with a lightning bolt. It strikes Gabranth square in the chest; sparks fly from every joint in his armor, but the warrior only grunts as he rushes forward, twisting in a rotating strike with both his weapons. Sephiroth brings up the Masamune, but instead of blocking with it, he sets it at an angle against the attack, then pushes off the ground, using his sword as a fulcrum. He lands on the other side of Gabranth's strike, disrupting it and sending him into a stumble, then pulls back. Sighting in on the armor beneath Gabranth's right underarm, Sephiroth puts all his weight behind a thrust.

The Masamune shoots through the gap in the plate and pierces the mail as though it's not even there. It goes right through Gabranth's shoulder, sliding along the bone. When it erupts from beneath his skin, it slams into the inside of the pauldron over his shoulder and comes to a halt, blood streaming from the wound. Sephiroth allows himself a cold smile.

He feels the expression fade when Gabranth speaks. "Good," the warrior says, his voice echoing inside his helmet. "You are no amateur." He cocks his head to one side; Sephiroth can hear his neck pop. "I can use my full strength."

The air around him explodes into a glowing display of power, shimmering and warping as though from intense heat. Sephiroth narrows his eyes, flash-blinded for a brief instant. In that interval, Gabranth spins into a tornado of slashing blades, too fast for Sephiroth's blurry vision to follow. The Masamune is ripped from his hand, and he takes several cuts to the chest that immediately begin to ooze blood. He leaps back, blinks away the spots in his eyes, and tries another lightning bolt, but this one is even less effective than before. Gabranth literally bats it away with a casual flick of his smaller sword before slicing his larger one through the air in front of him. Energy flickers along its edge, and an enormous blue shockwave rushes at Sephiroth, lifting him off his feet and into an arc that terminates with him crashing into one of the stone statues adjacent to the ramp at the far end of the shrine. The statue explodes into dozens of large stone chunks; Sephiroth lies there for a moment, his head pounding, his vision swimming.

He forces himself to his feet. Gabranth strides toward him, wordlessly extricating the Masamune from his shoulder as he does. Behind him, Auron is locked in combat with Kuja, while Mateus and Terra bombard the squad of faux-Gabranths with bright bursts of energy. Suddenly, Sephiroth seems to be the only one having difficulty holding his own.

"Do not let your courage wane so easily," Gabranth says as he walks toward Sephiroth, the blood still gushing from his shoulder staining his passage red. "Within our hierarchy, above me there is only Garland, Lord Chaos's personal guard. You do not fare poorly when one considers the difference in our strengths."

"That's very kind of you to say," Sephiroth says, wiping a trickle of blood out of his right eye. "But I've had enough."

"Oh? Should I instead loudly denigrate you, as many of my allies so enjoy doing in a battle?"

"No," Sephiroth replies. "I'm tired of being thrown around, electrocuted, crushed, tossed into explosions, stabbed, all of it. Auron's been doing all the _hard _work around here so far, and I'm sick of feeling like a tagalong." He shakes the dust from himself, raises his fists in an en-garde pose. "So I'm going to beat you, and I'll do it without the Masamune."

He can picture Gabranth's raised eyebrow. "Are you, now? When I was not exerting myself to the utmost, we were evenly matched – or perhaps you even had a slight advantage. Now, however, I have inflicted extensive bodily harm upon you while myself sustaining what is, in the end –" the aura surrounding him flickers wildly and the blood suddenly stops gushing from his shoulder – "a negligible wound. How will forgoing your sword improve your chances?"

"Extensive bodily harm?" Sephiroth asks. "My teachers used to wake me up with beatings worse than this. And as far as my sword goes, the Masamune has great reach, but the longer a sword's reach, the larger its blind spots. Compared to mine, your swords are quite small, so you've been able to exploit my openings and keep me off-balance – barely." He smirks. "Compared to my _fists_, however…"

"A sound analysis, but you seem to be ignoring the incontrovertible fact that I am armored from head to foot. How do you intend to pierce my plate with your bare hands?"

Sephiroth just grins and channels the energy of his Materia into his hands, wreathing them in writhing tendrils of lightning.

Gabranth barely has time to raise his swords before Sephiroth is on him. He lands four solid punches on Gabranth's breastplate before the warrior even knows what's happening, electricity crawling along the armor. Gabranth staggers back with each strike, and Sephiroth hears him grunt in pain when the fourth one lands.

He retaliates with an attack at Sephiroth's neck – he slices from the right with his left-hand sword and vice versa, the two blades passing over one another in a tilted cross. Sephiroth jerks his head back, the very tips of Gabranth's blades slicing shallow furrows in his skin. In the same motion, he brings his right boot up in a crescent kick that takes Gabranth's helmet beneath the visor, sending it flying off his head. He then drops low into a sweeping kick, but Gabranth reacts with astonishing speed, leaping over the attack as though he wears no armor. He takes the opportunity to deliver a swift kick of his own to Sephiroth's chin with the toe of his armored greave. Sephiroth feels all his teeth click together, but he ignores the pain, retaliating with an explosive uppercut that sends Gabranth flying back. All the hair on the warrior's head stands up from the electricity arcing between Sephiroth's fingers. He lands with a loud clank several feet away, sinking to one knee.

Sephiroth exploits the opening, picturing the man's face. He feels himself rush forward, propelled by the strange forces of the dash, and he leads with a left cross that breaks Gabranth's nose and snaps the man's head back. This time the warrior actually roars with pain, the sound hitching as his body spasms.

Even so, he is not out. As Sephiroth's crushing strike lands, he brings his smaller sword around, gleaming with the same blue energy from the first shockwave, in a swipe that cuts cleanly across Sephiroth's abdomen. Sephiroth feels the magical force ripple through his gut before he is sent skidding across the stone surface of the shrine. He manages to keep his feet, coming to a halt some twenty feet away. When he draws a deep breath to replenish the air that was pushed from his lungs, he feels his chest seize and he coughs up a sizable quantity of blood. The strike must have caused internal bleeding.

Gabranth sends two more shockwaves his way, so he forces himself to stop coughing. Sephiroth rolls out of the way of the shockwaves; as he comes back up, he sees Gabranth dashing toward him, energy coalescing around him in a large sphere. Without hesitation, he remembers what Mateus said about the dash – that he could push himself away from someone if he so chose. He looks at Gabranth's face, but instead of focusing on getting closer, he thinks about getting away.

As though there were a rope around his waist, Sephiroth feels himself pull away from Gabranth. He halts his dash just before it takes him off the edge of the shrine; as he watches, the energy Gabranth was gathering goes up in a blinding explosion that would have consumed him if he hadn't moved. Deciding to counterattack before his enemy can recover, Sephiroth reverses his dash again, rocketing toward the center of the sphere, fists clenched and blazing with electricity.

He forces himself down on his back, letting his momentum slide him in close. An instant later, his caution is rewarded as Gabranth's wild swings arc through the empty air in front of him. Sephiroth springs to his feet, boxes the other man's ears, ignores the feeling of satisfaction at the look of pain on Gabranth's face. He instead grabs hold of Gabranth's right wrist, ducks under his arm while twisting it around his back, and then gives a sharp pull. Gabranth's arm doesn't break, but his fingers do go numb, the sword slipping out of them. Sephiroth dances back, avoiding the reverse stab Gabranth attempts straight through his black cape, then rushes forward again in a roll over the dropped sword. He comes up with it gripped in both hands. Gabranth, still trying to extricate his remaining weapon from his cape, is left wide open to the chop that Sephiroth makes at his head.

In a moment, the aura of power around Gabranth flares to blinding levels. Sephiroth feels his strike reflect off a hard surface; he staggers back, having put so much strength into the attack only to have it blocked. The aura fades, guttering down to nothing. Sephiroth supposes that must have taken the last of Gabranth's reserves to use it as a physical shield, so he instantly recovers from the stagger to charge forward again, aiming a flurry of crushing blows at Gabranth's torso, knowing the man will be expecting another strike at his head. The claymore, coupled with Sephiroth's immense strength, smashes large dents in Gabranth's plate, but the armor holds. Sephiroth dodges another thrust, goes all-out in a slash at Gabranth's weapon hand that connects with a thundering crash and sends the smaller sword flying from his enemy's grip.

"Surrender," Sephiroth gets out between pants, leveling Gabranth's own sword at him.

Gabranth wipes at his face with the back of his hand, the gauntlet coming away covered in blood, before resetting his nose with a sickening _snap._ "You are a formidable opponent," he says. "I acknowledge it from the bottom of my heart. However, I believe your previous analysis of this battle still holds true."

Sephiroth blinks. "What?"

By way of reply, Gabranth comes at him in a dash, moving so fast he seems to accelerate into a grey blur. With his left hand, he smacks Sephiroth's weapon out of the way. Gabranth anticipates Sephiroth's automatic dodge; with his right hand he punches him square in the face.

The impact slams Sephiroth onto his back, cracking his skull against the floor of the shrine; the impact spiderwebs the stone with cracks. All he can see is the swirling, purple void of the sky, and that begins to darken. _Fool. How could you fall for that? Get up. Get up or you'll never live it down._

He sees Gabranth pick up his sword. It is the last thing he remembers.


	13. Chapter XIII

**Chapter XIII**

"This is your final performance!" Kuja laughs as he bombards Auron with energy blasts. "Accept it and let the curtain fall!"

Now that Mateus has released his spell, Auron is less perturbed than ever by Kuja's attacks. Individually, the small explosions the young man can create are mere nuisances to the guardian – glancing blows, like getting slapped. The clusters of them Kuja summons around Auron have a combined effect that is somewhat more painful, but they are unlikely to do him any permanent damage.

The reason he is letting Kuja toss him around is because he has his eye on the orbs of light surrounding the young man. When the facsimile of him had hit Auron with its orbs, it had hurt. He is sure he has burns beneath his clothing, which itself is no shield against the magic. On top of that, his shoulder is beginning to ache, the wound inflicted by Squall not fully healed. If he takes much more punishment he is sure it will start getting worse.

But the orbs of light swoop around Kuja in continuous motion, never still, and until he sees an opening Auron doesn't want to risk an attack. So he lets the explosions pepper him, getting his sword in the way whenever he can.

"How long can you maintain this futile defense?" Kuja asks, waving his arms as though the explosions are a chorus and he their conductor. "This must be beginning to wear on you."

"Not as much as the sound of your voice," Auron says.

That cuts his opponent to the quick. Kuja snarls, pointing a finger at Auron. His orbs whirl from their orbit around him, scything toward Auron in a staggered line. Seeing his chance, Auron focuses on Kuja's face. He feels the dash grab and hurl him like a rag doll at Kuja. In the same instant, he gets his sword up in front of him. As he gambled, the orbs ricochet from the surface of the blade, whirling through the air in confused spirals. Kuja's face is a study in shock as Auron rams into him at top speed, burying the broad side of his sword in the young man's gut. The attack sends Kuja flying; he slams hard into the side of the ramp at the far end of the shrine.

"You oaf!" he shrieks. "How dare you!"

"Maybe you wouldn't do so poorly if you didn't constantly put on airs," Auron suggests.

"ENOUGH!" Kuja screams at him. "I WILL HAVE NO MORE OF YOUR TAUNTS!" He draws his orbs in. "PREPARE TO TAKE YOUR FINAL BOW!"

"I'm trembling," Auron says.

The air around Kuja erupts into an inferno of light and color. Auron has to bring up his free hand to shield his eyes from the glare. When it fades, he raises his sword on instinct, ready for the attack he knows is coming.

This helps him little when he is surrounded by a forest of explosions. Reacting on instinct, he summons Kuja's face again, dashing toward his enemy through the wall of death. The move takes him out of the lethal zone, but the force of the attack still hits him hard enough to knock him out of the dash. He skids to a halt some distance away, winded.

Where Kuja was is now an apparition. The young man's face is still recognizable, but the rest of him is completely transfigured. His hair and clothing have been replaced by long, purple fur that covers most of his body, leaving only his abdomen and right foot bare. Grey feathers burst in tufts from his shoulders. His arms are sheathed in loose, fluttering sleeves of ragged grey cloth. A similar material hangs down behind him where his cloak had been, as well as covering his left thigh.

Most disturbingly of all, however, is the fact that he now has a long, furred tail. Auron stares at it for a moment before his presence of mind returns. "What _are _you?"

Kuja grins at him. "Strong," he says. "That is all that matters."

The air around him flares up with a dozen orbs of light.

Auron leaps into a roll to evade the barrage of seven of the orbs lancing out at him. They burn deep furrows in the stone of the shrine. _If he hits me with one of those, I _will _die._ Auron raises his sword for another charge before he realizes the orbs did not return to Kuja after their initial attack missed. He whirls, gets his blade in the way of the follow-up attack, feels six of the orbs rebound from its surface. The seventh slips underneath his guard, but he throws himself out of the way. It burns a hole straight through his coat, missing his side by a hair's breadth.

Then the glowing gold-and-black spheres of Kuja's explosions coalesce out of thin air around him, and Auron realizes he has been checkmated.

At the last possible second, a wall of energy goes up around him, shielding him from the immense blast. The air clears a moment later, revealing Mateus standing nearby, his hand outstretched, an intense look of concentration on his face.

"The dash!" he hisses. "Think about how it works!" He has no further time to speak before the Gabranth facsimiles are on him again, three of them attacking in tandem.

Auron throws himself to his feet. Kuja, still glowing and utterly otherworldly, clucks and wags a finger at him. "Persistent, aren't you? Don't worry. I'll end it all very soon."

All of his orbs rush at Auron. The guardian repeats his maneuver from before, bringing up his sword as he dashes at Kuja. The young man has learned, however. Even as his orbs ricochet off Auron's sword, he summons an enormous explosion in front of him, and Auron flies right into it.

For a moment everything is pain. Auron regains his senses quickly enough, but they inform him he is lying some distance away from Kuja, bleeding from his nose and mouth, every inch of his body burning with pain. It takes everything he has to get back up; he has to shoulder his sword because he lacks the strength to lift it.

"You're still alive?" Kuja laughs. "I would have thought for sure that would be the end of you. Well…" He waves a hand.

A familiar feeling slips over Auron. He sees all of Kuja's orbs closing in on him with perfect clarity, as though time has frozen in an ocean of glass. He has been here before – when he fought Yunalesca, when his life was balanced on a knife's edge.

_This time will be different._

What does Mateus mean, think about how the dash works? When he pictures someone's face, he is pulled toward them. He might also be pushed away, if he wants to be. What else did Mateus say? That the dash is based upon the rules of this world, a world of dichotomies – light and dark, order and chaos.

But how does this help him now, with his death closing in on him?

Now that Kuja is in this heightened state of power, his orbs have demonstrated they can follow Auron at will without returning to Kuja with every attack. Dashing away from Kuja will gain him nothing. Dashing toward Kuja is asking for an introduction to another explosion. No matter how he focuses on Kuja, he –

All of this flashes through Auron's mind in a single instant, followed in the next by his revelation. While his perfect clarity lasts, Auron focuses on all the orbs, holds them one by one in his mind – and pictures his own face over all of them.

Kuja's face goes from smug to shocked in a flash when he sees his orbs halt in midair inches from Auron. They hang there, quivering, as the guardian opens his good eye. He looks at the points of light, his expression contemplative.

Then he blinks. The orbs are blown away from him as though caught up in a maelstrom, sent whirling out into the space surrounding the shrine.

"HOW?" Kuja screams. "YOU HAVE NO MAGIC COMPARED TO ME! NONE!"

"It's the way this world works," Auron replies. "That's all."

Kuja makes a wordless sound of pure rage. He clenches his fists, which glow blue with power, before bringing them forward in a hurling motion. The energy coalesces into a bright sphere, pulsing with the radiance of a star, which shoots toward Auron at high speed.

The guardian shifts his weight back as he sees Kuja throw the projectile, then brings his sword forward with the force of his entire body behind it. At the moment his weapon collides with Kuja's attack, he pictures his face over the miniature star.

It is sent rocketing back at Kuja, who barely has time to throw up his hands before it collides with him. The energies pent up inside it break free in a massive blue explosion, burning him from head to toe and blinding him for a crucial moment.

When his vision clears, he looks up just in time to see Auron, fifteen feet off the ground, hurl his sword at him. Like a bolt from a ballista, the sword lances into Kuja, piercing straight through his chest. It comes to a sudden halt as it grinds into his spine, bending him forward as his body is wracked by pain and incredible internal stresses.

Then, propelled by a dash and the inexorable force of gravity, Auron lands a solid kick on the pommel of his blade. The blow forces it the rest of the way through Kuja, its point erupting out the young man's back in a spray of blood. It sinks several inches into the stone ground; Kuja hangs limply on it, stuck like a pinned bug.

"No," he gasps, blood frothing about his lips as he speaks. "I don't…"

His eyes dull before he finishes the sentence.

Auron sags, his wounds and fatigue catching up with him as his adrenalin begins to fade. "I know you didn't," he says. "Find peace."

There is a blinding pain in his back, then in his chest. Confused, Auron looks down to see a sword protruding from beneath his clothing, coated in his blood.

The question of what is going on forms on his lips, but it dies before he can shape it properly. An odd sense of detachment takes hold of him. He can feel himself sinking to his knees, feel the sword being pulled back out of him, but it all seems very far away, academic. As he collapses to the ground, he manages to summon the effort to turn his head.

Gabranth stands over him, swords in hand, the longer one dripping red.

"Funny," Auron murmurs. "What did you say… 'And when I do kill you, it shall not be from behind?'"

"But I was telling the truth," Gabranth says to him. "That strike missed your vitals – if a man like you indeed has any. If it is attended to quickly, and you are given time and magic with which to heal, I have no doubt a man of your fortitude will survive." He levels his sword at Auron's face. "This will be what kills you."

"Seems like… a cheat…" Auron whispers.

"Call me what you will. Ultimately, my duty is to my master. That far surpasses in import any compunction I may hold against ambushes."

He raises his sword.

There is a blur of motion. Gabranth falls some distance away, near the edge of the shrine, his armor clanging as it rebounds from the stone. Auron blinks to bring his blurring vision back into focus. Standing over him is Sephiroth, looking bloodied and beaten – but unbowed.

"Fortunately, I don't have _any _compunctions about ambushes," he says.

Gabranth is on his feet again quickly, Sephiroth's dashing blow doing little to rattle him. "How?" he asks, clearly bewildered. "I struck you hard enough to crush stone, and your fall left cracks in the ground. Your brain should be jelly within your skull."

Sephiroth grins. "I've been trained to be the perfect soldier since I was three years old," he says. "You underestimated me."

Without another word, he grabs the hilt of Auron's sword with both hands. In one fluid, twisting motion, he pulls it from the ground, Kuja still impaled on its blade. He whirls around in a complete arc to gain momentum, the sword cocked at an angle to keep Kuja trapped on it.

Then Sephiroth finishes his rotation, letting the forces of the movement straighten the sword out to point at Gabranth. Kuja's body flies off the sword, crosses the distance between Sephiroth and Gabranth, and smashes the warrior square in the chest. The impact takes him off his feet.

Gabranth and Kuja fall off the edge of the shrine together, disappearing into the void.

Without another glance at his fallen adversary, Sephiroth drops to one knee next to Auron. "Hold on, Auron," he says. "Gabranth was right – the wound isn't fatal. Can you still hear me?"

Auron manages a nod. "Getting foggy," he says. "I still remember what it's like to bleed."

"Don't speak. Conserve your strength. I'll go help Mateus and Terra with the rest of the not-Gabranths, and then we'll tend to you."

As Sephiroth begins to get up, a shadow falls over the two of them. He leaps back, falling seamlessly into a ready stance, but he stiffens with shock when he sees who it is.

Genesis Rhapsodos grins at him, LOVELESS in one hand and a potion in the other. "Hello, Sephiroth.

"Enjoying your role as the Hero?"


	14. Chapter XIV

**Chapter XIV**

Sephiroth stares at Genesis, using an expression of shock to cover his furious calculations. He remembers where exactly he dropped the Masamune; if he sprints as fast as his battered body will allow, he can make it there in three seconds assuming Genesis doesn't interfere. It might go faster if he can use the dash to hone in on objects rather than people.

"Don't bother," Genesis tells him. "In your condition, you couldn't make it to your sword before me. Besides, I'm not here to fight you."

"Oh," Sephiroth says. "Really. First you desert from SOLDIER, taking the vast majority of the Seconds with you. Then Chaos recruits you to help him kill Cosmos in order to upset the balance of the universe itself. I intend to make you answer for all of this, and yet you tell me you're not here to fight."

"When we have our battle, I want it to be fair," Genesis says with a shrug. "I can hardly say I've earned the mantle of 'Hero' if I defeat you with an unfair advantage."

"Is that what the potion is for?" Sephiroth asks.

Genesis looks around. "This hardly seems a fitting location for our climactic battle, Sephiroth. It's old, ill-kept…" He eyes the statues of Chaos. "And frankly, I find the décor somewhat gauche. No, I think this potion – elixir, actually – is for your friend."

Unwilling to take this at face value, Sephiroth cautiously reaches for the elixir, which Genesis hands over with a smirk. He uncorks the bottle, takes a whiff and a small sip. Instantly, he feels the magic of the drink coursing through him, restoring some of his vitality. Satisfied, Sephiroth begins to trickle the elixir down Auron's throat. Color returns to the guardian's face, his good eye snaps open, and his wound seals itself up before Sephiroth's eyes. Before Auron finishes all of it, though, he pushes the bottle away from him. "It's all right," he says. "I'll be fine now. My wound's closed and my shoulder's healed. You should take the rest."

"But –"

"Drink the rest, or I'll beat you unconscious and force-feed it to you. And from the look of you, I wouldn't have a very hard time of it."

Sephiroth considers calling the guardian's bluff, but decides to instead take the man at his word. He downs the rest of the elixir, suddenly feeling better than he has in days. His wounds are healed, his thirst has disappeared; even his fatigue is gone.

As this is all taking place, Genesis stands a short distance away, watching intently. When Sephiroth finishes off the elixir, he laughs. "You're welcome, Sephiroth. Let it not be said I showed my enemy no compassion."

Sephiroth gets to his feet, ignoring the other SOLDIER. He turns, looking for Terra and Mateus. A moment later he sees the two of them simultaneously blast the last remaining Gabranth-creature with bolts of energy. It screams before shattering into hundreds of glittering shards that dissolve into nothing.

"What _are _those things?" he wonders aloud.

"I heard Mateus call them 'manikins,'" Genesis replies. "They were created by Cid of the Lufaine to further equip the forces of Chaos."

"Cid of the Lufaine?" Auron asks. "Who?"

Genesis smirks again. "I see Cosmos does not inform her pawns as well as Chaos does."

"Spare us the gloating," Sephiroth says. He notices Genesis's gaze beginning to drift toward his copy of LOVELESS, so he quickly adds, "And spare us the LOVELESS quotes. If you want to tell us what's going on, do it. Otherwise, we can fight, or we can be on our way."

Genesis's smirk fades. "If you insist, Sephiroth. But where are you going to go?"

"Jecht told us we can only reach the Plains of Chaos when we have nowhere else to go," Auron says. "We'll try to find out exactly what that means, and then do it. If we have to go through you…" He shrugs.

"Very practical. Tell me, though: is it good form to kill a man after he's saved your life?"

"No, but it's not good form to save the life of an enemy to begin with. Clearly, good form has little place in what we do here."

Genesis sighs and returns LOVELESS to his coat. "Oh, well-said. Well-said, indeed. Yes, it matters little how we treat one another in this bubble, this neat little world constructed for the gods' amusement."

"Start making sense," Auron says brusquely.

"No, I think he should stop talking entirely," Mateus interrupts, imposing himself between the two warriors and Genesis. "This will only distract them, Genesis. Our purpose is to bring down the gods. What else do they need to know?"

Sephiroth frowns. "Yes, because we're already so inclined to trust you, Mateus. Why don't you let Genesis say what he wants?"

"The two of you do not need –"

"Let us determine what we need," Auron cuts him off. "We have agreed to help you because it suits us. If this is going to change the nature of our relationship, I think we should be told."

"Yes," Genesis says. "Yes, I think you will find this interesting." He gestures at the sky. "I'm sure you two have begun to form certain impressions of the universe you've found yourselves within. You've been moving from tiny world to tiny world, all of them points of light suspended in the sky over the Forest, in pursuit of something you can't quite articulate. Your goal is the Plains of Chaos and their ruler, but how do you get there? What do you need to do once you arrive? Cosmos hasn't told you any of this because it would ruin the experiment."

Sephiroth narrows his eyes. "Experiment?"

"A very long time ago, Cid of the Lufaine was thrown into the Interdimensional Rift, the great space between worlds. There, he met a power, a dragon named Shinryu, who agreed to create an endless cycle of war with Cosmos and Chaos leading the opposing forces. Repeated enough times, observation of these cycles would allow Cid to understand the true natures of harmony and discord, allowing him to return to his world and save it from the war that was consuming it."

"All right," Auron says. "Let's put aside for the moment that this is potentially the most roundabout, asinine way to end a war ever conceived. What would this Shinryu gain from instigating these cycles?"

"The same thing anyone with enough power wants to gain," Genesis replies. "More power."

"It seems like it would have had to spend a great deal of it to create this universe, these gods, and constantly restart the cycle once it ends," Sephiroth points out.

"Oh, of course. But consider: we know that matter and energy cannot be created, only translated, one to the other, by mundane means. Magic is no exception; though it may create matter and energy by the force of your will, that will is driven by your mind, which is in turn driven by food, rest… You cannot escape the cycle; you can only turn it to your advantage."

"How?"

"Simple. You must find a method by which you liberate an enormous quantity of energy from a very small quantity of matter, so that the effort going into the collection of that matter is dwarfed by the amount of energy you reap from its translation."

"And by creating this endless cycle of war, Shinryu has found that method?" Auron asks.

"This universe," Mateus says, "is an altar." His expression is that of a corpse, his voice flat. "And we are lambs. I told you as much before, but I was not entirely truthful."

"I'm not particularly surprised," Sephiroth says. "Were you lying about every conflict ending in a stalemate?"

Mateus hesitates. Sephiroth can see the gears turning in the man's head. Finally, he says, "Yes."

Auron nods. "It seemed too convenient. One of the gods has won every time."

"Yes." Mateus shakes his head. "You said before, Auron, that you are sacrificed to Chaos if you fall, and we are sacrificed to Cosmos if you kill us. This is true, but if I died in the service of Chaos he would receive the lion's share of the sacrifice's power. After all, it would not be my killer's intent to offer me up to Cosmos.

"Once the warriors of one god triumph over those of the other, they attack their foe. Shinryu lends its power directly to the god on the defensive, which is always enough to tip the balance in the god's favor and lead to the mortals' deaths and the subsequent release of power. After this, Cosmos and Chaos battle, and one destroys the other. At the last, Shinryu itself descends and consumes all that remains before restarting the cycle again."

"This universe," Genesis says, "is a well-oiled machine. You feed into it human lives, and in exchange it produces vast amounts of power."

"And you know all this how?" Auron asks.

"Because Chaos told us as much."

Sephiroth grinds his teeth. "Cosmos was much less informative."

"Of course she was," Mateus says. "This is a universe built upon rules in order to achieve a desired effect. Cosmos understands she is only a component in a machine – an important one, but a component nonetheless. However, as a manifestation of Order, this is simply how it should be for her. Chaos is the one who chafes within his restrictions and wants to see it all destroyed."

"So you weren't lying when you explained the gods' motivations to us," Auron comments. "Cosmos really does want complete subjugation, and Chaos really does want to annihilate everything."

"Yes. And we're the only ones who can see to it that the machine is destroyed and Shinryu brought down."

"How many times?" Sephiroth asks. "How many times has this cycle been repeated?"

Genesis looks at him, his smirk replaced by total stoicism. "This is the eighth time."

"Is this the first time we've personally been recruited?"

"No," Mateus says. "Auron has been here twice before, along with Jecht, who has only become a servant of Chaos in this cycle. You have been here once before, Sephiroth, as has Genesis. As a universe apart from all others, both within and without the Interdimensional Rift, this machine's relation to time and space is disjointed. We can be summoned here to fight and die as many times as Shinryu needs."

Sephiroth feels his stomach clench. "I was here before? What happened?"

Genesis runs a hand through his hair. "You killed yourself when you were told the truth."

Dead silence hangs in the air for a long while before Auron speaks up again. "I can't say I blame him. Clearly, we need to do everything in our power to destroy this system Shinryu has set up for itself."

"Agreed," Genesis says. "The problem is that we have only one way to do that."

"Destroy both Cosmos and Chaos," Mateus says, "and then take the fight to Shinryu itself."

"Can we win against Cosmos and Chaos?" Auron asks. "For that matter, even if we can, how powerful is Shinryu that it can set this entire universe in motion? And it has since absorbed all the power of seven cycles' worth of war and sacrifice. Can we even comprehend its existence at this point?"

Genesis shrugs. "Who can say? What _is _important, though, is the fact that if you _can _destroy both Cosmos and Chaos, you will be able to stand toe-to-toe with gods. I would say that counts for something."

"And why are we the crux of this plan?" Sephiroth asks.

"Oh, you're not," Mateus replies. "You're not the first of Cosmos's pawns I've approached. You are certainly the ones who have taken the truth best, and the only ones who have agreed to work with me for now. But it ultimately does not matter which pawn wins, so long as that pawn is committed to destroying both Cosmos and Chaos before continuing to Shinryu."

"You speak as though only one person is going to emerge from this war," Auron says. "Isn't that counter-intuitive? Would it not be best to keep everyone alive, and to band together to fight the gods?"

"You cannot reach the Plains of Chaos while servants of Chaos still exist, and we can no more reach Order's Sanctuary while Cosmos has her pawns," Genesis replies. "This universe is built on rules, and that is one of them."

"So," Sephiroth asks, "who do we have to kill?"

Mateus smirks. "I'm glad to see you're so practical. You've killed Ultimecia, Kefka, and Kuja. Within Chaos's army, there remain Garland, myself, the Cloud of Darkness, Exdeath, Genesis, Jecht, and Gabranth."

"You expect us to kill all of them – and the both of you?" Auron asks.

"If you're fortunate, your fellow pawns will kill off their respective opponents. On your side, you have Firion, Bartz, Squall, and Zidane. Firion is my foe, and Bartz opposes Exdeath; Squall was Ultimecia's enemy, and Zidane Kuja's, so you have done their jobs for them. They may pick up the slack where their companions failed."

"We've suffered casualties?" Sephiroth asks. A feeling of unease and helplessness grips him. He hates being so thoroughly in the dark.

"Garland killed his counterpart, the Warrior of Light. The Cloud of Darkness condemned the Onion Knight to the void, Cecil and Golbez killed one another in their fight, and Kefka – well, his victory is obvious." Mateus motions at Terra, who has been standing by for the entire conversation, her eyes dull. "Someone with barely any will of her own cannot possibly be relied upon to fight gods."

"What about Gabranth?" Sephiroth's head still throbs from the blow he took from the warrior, despite the elixir.

"He is a warrior, but he is not opposed by anyone. It is his duty to defend Chaos; he is usually the final sacrifice in the mortal conflict if Cosmos is winning. However, this cycle has seen something unprecedented – he killed his counterpart, Shantotto, Cosmos's guard." Mateus shrugs. "It certainly seems that Chaos is going to win this cycle, but I never consider anything a certainty when there remains the slightest possibility of alternatives. That is why the two of you now know what you do, rather than remaining in the dark like the rest of your would-be allies."

"The question remains: what next?" Auron says. "You've very kindly pulled the wool off our eyes, but you insist we will still have to fight even though we share common purpose." His hand drifts toward his sword. "Should we go ahead and settle things now, then?"

"Oh, but I have business elsewhere," Mateus replies. "I will leave it up to Genesis whether he wants to fight Sephiroth at this point or not. For my own part, I believe Firion is about to enter my castle."

Sephiroth rushes forward to seize the man, but the Emperor disappears in a flash of light before he can lay a hand on him. Clamping down on his anger, he forces his features into an expression of dispassion before he turns to Genesis. "So we have to fight one another because 'it's the way the universe works?' I won't accept that. I don't understand your reasons for deserting, but we can settle that when we get back to Gaia." He extends a hand to Genesis. "Help us. You came here from the Plains of Chaos. Show us the way back, and we'll destroy Chaos together."

For a moment, Genesis's gaze rests on Sephiroth's hand. His expression wavers, and Sephiroth is sure he is about to say yes.

Then his eyes harden. "I'm sorry, Sephiroth, but this is the trap in which we're snared." He turns, beginning to walk away. "When you're ready to accept this and fight me, I'll be at the Planet's Core."

Sephiroth blinks. "You mean –"

Genesis walks off the edge of the shrine before he can finish the sentence.


	15. Chapter XV

**Chapter XV**

"This is quite a conundrum we're faced with," Auron observes.

Sephiroth grimaces. "I don't trust Mateus any farther than I can throw him –"

"Several dozen feet?"

The SOLDIER pauses, then shrugs. "Just a turn of phrase."

"Yes. Go on."

"I don't trust Mateus, but I can't bring myself to believe that Genesis would lie about something like this. We haven't been on good terms for a while now, but he's always been truthful with me."

Auron nods. "I understand where you're coming from. I'm not speaking of a conundrum of belief; as far as I'm concerned, this explanation fits the situation too well for us to disregard. I'm instead speaking of our next destination. You have to face Genesis at this Planet's Core he spoke of, but at the same time, Mateus as good as told us that he is about to murder Firion. Clearly, all he is interested in doing is destroying the machine – and we are useful tools to that end, so he is not opposing us for now."

"I don't think we should confront him yet," Sephiroth replies. "We have no idea who this Firion is, beyond the fact that he is a servant of Cosmos, and she might have been able to manipulate him into serving her without question. If we try to explain to him that she is as much the enemy here as Chaos, he might turn on us."

"But we can't ignore his plight," Auron says. "Especially since we've seen how Mateus operates – in a straight fight, as with the Gabranth manikins, he only seems to be an average spellcaster. However, that is not his forte; he is at his most dangerous when he has time to prepare and operate through deception, subtle magic, and traps. If Firion walks into his castle alone and unprepared, he's doomed."

Sephiroth opens his mouth to retort that Firion knew the risks when he chose to fight, then closes it. _He couldn't have had any more choice in the matter than we did._ He suppresses a scowl when he sees the smile in Auron's eye – the guardian knows he's won this argument. "Fine. We'll go to Mateus's castle and head Firion off. There's always the chance that he'll be amenable to reason, after all."

"The other servants of Cosmos we've met do not engender me with great hope," Auron comments, eyeing Terra. "But that is a nice dream."

"Go ahead and make fun. It's very productive."

With a small sigh, Auron shakes his head. "I'm so very unappreciated." He straightens. "Now, if we're going to stop Firion from getting himself killed, we're going to need to go back into the Forest. You remember how we got there last time, right?"

Sephiroth looks at the edge of the Chaos Shrine. "Gabranth fell off; he might be in the Forest, waiting for us."

"You managed to hold your own against him one-on-one. The three of us should be able to handle him." Auron starts walking toward the edge, clearly uninterested in waiting.

Forcing his misgivings to the back of his mind, Sephiroth starts after him, only to realize that Terra isn't moving. He turns around to look at her. "Terra? Aren't you coming?"

She looks straight at him, the motion almost alarming in its unprecedented nature. For a moment, Sephiroth can see her mind working behind her eyes, clear as the nose on her face. Then she nods before moving to follow the two men.

"Progress," Auron observes, resuming his path toward the edge.

"We're not doing anything," Sephiroth says.

"Perhaps it's simply a matter of time, of letting her get used to being an individual again. She became attached to you in the Forest, but clearly she's reevaluating decisions and making new ones with at least some degree of thought. They do say time heals all wounds."

"It's only been a day."

Auron shrugs as he comes to the edge. "Then we should be thankful she seems to be recovering so quickly, shouldn't we?" He smiles before he steps off the edge of the Shrine and into the abyss.

Only a few steps behind, Sephiroth makes to follow him but stops short as he is about to walk off the edge. He stands there, one foot suspended over the void, mind racing.

Why did he kill himself last time?

The knowledge that he has been brought here to be sacrificed up to a dark god he's never heard of is off-putting, certainly. Perhaps even a little upsetting. But he can't imagine killing himself over this knowledge. What could he have to gain?

He wobbles as Terra bumps into him. "Sorry," he says, looking over his shoulder at her. "I didn't mean to stop so suddenly."

"I remember," she says in a small, girlish voice.

Sephiroth starts and whirls around, stepping back from the edge as he does so. "What did you just say?" he asks, wanting to be sure he isn't hallucinating.

She fixes him with those intense blue eyes. "I remember everything," she says. Then she brushes past him to jump off the edge.

He watches her fall until she disappears into the purple void, unnerved but unable to pin down why.

_Everything about what?_

* * *

Auron has been falling for a minute before it occurs to him that he might be wrong.

Just because falling out of the sky above Ultimecia's castle led them into the Forest doesn't mean the same will apply everywhere. There is an old saying about assumptions, and at the moment Auron feels particularly asinine about his.

The void has been rapidly shifting from purple to black, though Auron can see that he is still visible as though lit from all sides. He twists around in limbo, aware he is falling but with little visual aid to corroborate the sensation.

Then down becomes forward, the void disappears behind Auron, and he is sent careening out into open blue sky. With a lunge, Auron rights himself to see he is falling toward a swirling maelstrom of crackling energy; the only structure nearby is a large castle, suspended in the air above it.

Knowing what he does about how the dash works, Auron has no trouble picturing his own face on the structure and willing himself toward it. His fall levels out into an arc, taking him up and away from the maelstrom. A moment later he lands on the battlements of the castle.

Straightening up, Auron takes a look around. The castle floats motionlessly in a peaceful blue sky, but surrounding it are portals that seem to lead into other worlds. Looking through them, Auron can see, amongst other things, a forest – though he can tell it is not the Forest – a village, a desert, and a sailing vessel.

Still, he has more pressing concerns than the nature of this place. "Sephiroth?" he calls. "Terra?"

"They're on their way to the Forest," Jecht says, stepping out from the shadow of the tower at the corner of the battlements. "I pulled you here."

Auron begins to go for his sword, but Jecht holds up a hand. "Hold on, Auron. I'm not here to fight you yet. At least, not for real."

The guardian raises an eyebrow. "If you wanted to talk some more, you could have come to the Chaos Shrine. We had a very interesting conversation there with Mateus and Genesis."

"So they filled you in, eh? That's good." Jecht leans casually on his sword, an enormous fullblade nearly as wide and tall as he is. "I'm here to tell you the last thing you're gonna need to know to beat Chaos – and Cosmos, and everybody in between."

"Let me guess," Auron says. "It has something to do with the powers Gabranth and Kuja exhibited during our battle at the Shrine. They suddenly increased in strength and began to use new, deadlier techniques – in Kuja's case, he even underwent some kind of physical transformation."

Jecht nods. "Yeah, and now I'm gonna tell you what you need to know."

"I have no objection to your help, Jecht. But first, explain yourself to me."

His friend gives him a confused look. "What?"

"You told me you agreed to help Chaos because when he won he would gain the power to make Sin disappear forever," Auron says. "How can he rid Spira of Sin when he is himself a pawn, trapped in this machine of a universe?"

"The way he told me, he said we're here between two ticks of the clock, gone in one second and back the next. Usually we'd go back with no memory of what happened, unchanged, but he could send me back with some kind of seal of his power on me that would make me immune to Yu Yevon's control. Then I could kill the bastard myself."

Auron adjusts his sunglasses. "I suppose that's fair."

"Yeah. I don't give a damn about Shinryu or his big plan right now. If I can just get rid of Sin, then the next time I get pulled back to this damn place, nobody'll have anything on me. I can focus and help stop the machine."

"Your point is made," Auron says. "Now, tell me what you brought me here to hear. I _was _going with Sephiroth to save one of Cosmos's men." Jecht's eyes widen; Auron feels his gut clench with trepidation when he hears the other man hiss through his teeth. "What? What is it?"

"You mean Firion, right? You were going after that kid?"

"Yes. Why?"

Jecht rubs the bridge of his nose, his expression one of anger. "Your friend's screwed. Mateus's been setting that up for days now."

"Sephiroth can take care of himself," Auron replies, "and he has Terra with him."

"You don't get it," Jecht snaps. "That entire place is a _deathtrap_. If he goes into the castle after Firion, he's good as dead."

* * *

Sephiroth lands without difficulty in the Forest, touching down a short distance from Terra. He scans the area; seeing nothing but the girl and trees, he relaxes a bit.

He tenses up again when he realizes Auron is not here.

"Auron!" he calls out. "Are you there?"

There is no response.

Sephiroth immediately begins a wide sweep of the area, thinking the guardian might have hit his head on a branch or fallen prey to some similar mishap. However, fifteen minutes of searching produces nothing except frustration and a growing feeling that something has gone very wrong.

He finally turns to Terra, who has stood silently watching him for the entire duration of his survey. "Do you know what might have happened to him, Terra?"

She shakes her head.

Unwilling to show any anger, Sephiroth forces himself to calm. "Well, it's not good that he was separated from us, but I'm sure he'll try to meet up with us outside Mateus's castle to stop Firion. We should work from that assumption and go after him."

Terra just looks at him, seemingly unwilling to speak up again. Sephiroth nods, trying to exude an aura of authority he doesn't feel himself. "All right. Then let's head to Mateus's castle." He begins to turn. "If we're lucky, we'll find Fir-"

He stops speaking, surprised, when he sees the Forest has vanished, just like last time. He and Terra are now in a large, square chamber. The walls are covered in tiled, purple hexagons, apparently hewn from some sort of crystal; the floor has on it square tiles of a dull bluish stone. There is no visible light source, but instead the illumination is omnipresent, which is an odd effect.

"You poor fools," Mateus's voice rings out around them.

"Mateus!" Sephiroth says. "Where are you?"

"In all the senses that count, not here," Mateus says. "This place, this Pandemonium, is different from the Castle of Hell in my world. I took advantage of the nature of this universe to create a dimensional pocket – no way in save the Forest, and once you're inside, no way out. The castle does not have an exterior; there are no exits. I meant for it to kill Firion, but of course you had to be heroic and try to save him."

"We're working toward a common goal! It doesn't make sense for us to fight like this!"

"As I said, we stand on opposite ends of the same spectrum. Eventually, the servants of one deity will have to triumph over their foes. I was merely forced into revealing the true nature of this place by Genesis; when did I ever say I intended to spare you?"

"We _will_ get out of here," Sephiroth says. "We _will _get out, and we _will _kill you, Mateus."

The only answer is the man's echoing laughter, which slowly fades away to silence.


	16. Chapter XVI

Apologies, gentle readers. My lovely beta had a severe sickness of the everything and had to take a rest. Here is the chapter, with my apologies for its tardiness.

* * *

**Chapter XVI**

"No!" Jecht says. "You have to actually want to kill me when you strike me."

Auron gives an exasperated sigh, shouldering his blade. The two of them stand atop the castle floating in the sky; Jecht has said this place is called the Interdimensional Rift. For the better part of an hour now, Jecht has been having Auron strike at him, but the exercise so far seems to have been pointless.

"But I don't want to kill you," he says. "That's problematic."

"Trust me," Jecht assures him. "I'll be able to block it. Just don't do anything fancy. Aim at my head."

Despite the grave misgivings he feels about this, Auron reluctantly hefts his sword. He cuts at Jecht's head, the force of the blow more than enough to cave in his friend's skull. As he said, Jecht gets his own weapon in the way, holding it up in a reverse grip to push Auron's strike away with brute strength rather than clever swordplay.

"You feel that?" Jecht asks. "When our blades struck?"

"I felt the impact of the blow shake my arm," Auron replies. "And I felt you strain to push my blade aside. What am I supposed to derive from this?"

Jecht rubs the bridge of his nose. "That's what you feel, fine. But what did you _feel?_"

"I don't understand the distinction."

His friend sticks his sword into the ground, leaning on it. "Look, Auron. The strike was fatal, sure. But you knew I'd block it. Maybe I shouldn't have told you I could. You have to _want to kill me._"

"But that's not my goal."

Jecht shrugs. "Well, fine then." Without further preamble, he straightens up, frees his sword from the ground with a kick to the broad side of the blade, and charges.

Auron reacts instantly, sidestepping the sweeping vertical slice. He sweeps his sword off his shoulder in a slash at Jecht's side, hoping to wound the man without cutting too deep.

Then his friend does something that takes him entirely by surprise. Jecht lets go of his sword. The weapon, at the crest of its arc, flies into the air, spinning end over end. In the same motion, Jecht closes his hand into a fist and punches Auron's sword as it angles toward his abdomen. The force of the strike slams Auron's blade into the ground a hair's breadth away from Jecht's foot.

That same foot comes up in a kick to Auron's jaw. Auron is thrown off his feet by the force of it; he lands on his back, head throbbing. His new vantage point gives him an excellent view of Jecht leaping into the air to catch his sword. The blitzer catches it by the hilt as the blade spins into position above his head.

He descends like an avenging angel, bringing his sword down in an attack with the power to split a boulder. With no time to think, Auron pulls his sword across the ground to hold it over his chest in a hasty block.

Jecht's impact is incredible. Auron feels the stone crack beneath him, splinters of rock spraying everywhere. His sword breaks straight through his breastplate and into his chest, pressing down on his sternum so hard he can't breathe.

As abruptly as it came, the pressure disappears. The force of his attack spent, Jecht leaps back from Auron, giving the guardian room to pick himself up.

"So?" Jecht asks. "What'd you feel?"

Panting, clutching at his chest, Auron manages to lever himself into a crouch. "I felt…" He gulps a deep breath of air. "I felt that I didn't want to die."

"Exactly." Jecht thumps his chest. "The most important thing in a fight is here, Auron. You might not like to admit it, fighting with your head, but ultimately if you want to live bad enough, it'll get you through anything."

"So noted," Auron says, his breathing returning to normal. He can already feel the bruise blossoming on his chest. "What does this have to do with a transformation?"

"This universe is made up of things in conflict," Jecht explains. "Cosmos and Chaos, light and dark, whatever. Things don't have to be opposites to fight, either. When you step back far enough, remove skill and weapons and stuff from a fight, it boils down to who wants to win more. So every battle is your will battling another guy's."

"Go on."

"When you make yourself want to kill a guy, there's power in that. Your will moves your strikes, keeps you dodging out of the way of danger. This universe reacts to your will. Your will powers the dash, even if it's just taking advantage of the way the rules of this place work. Now, the universe also reacts to you hitting a guy. If you know what to look for, you can see the clashing of your wills exploding into energy. And if you can see it, you can grab it. Make it your own. Store it up until you need a boost."

"And this transfigures you," Auron says. "Like Kuja's metamorphosis, or Gabranth's sudden increase in raw power."

"Exactly." Jecht hefts his sword. "Now the first thing to do is to get you to recognize the will becoming energy in the universe. Nothing to this one except practice."

Auron grimaces, lifting his own weapon. "A lot of practice, I take it."

Jecht shrugs. "Who knows? You might be a quick study."

Then he charges again, and the battle is joined.

* * *

Sephiroth rejoins Terra in the room where they first appeared in Pandemonium. Every room seems to be the same – square or rectangular, identical walls and floor, each leading to one or two other rooms by way of gaping doorways. For the last two hours he has been making a careful circuit, trying to determine if there is any discernable structure to the building besides endless rooms.

He has seen no proof to contradict the endless-rooms theory yet.

"Well, I have good news," he says to her. "It's entirely possible we'll never run out of places to explore, because this place seems like it goes on forever."

She looks at him, wordless.

"The bad news," he continues, "is that it's likely we'll both die here, probably from thirst. I don't see any way to get to the Forest, picturing Genesis's face in my mind doesn't do anything, and I don't think Mateus will be interested in letting us go."

Terra shakes her head. She turns to a seemingly random doorway and starts walking.

For a moment Sephiroth thinks about asking her what the hell she's doing, but he decides to keep quiet and follow instead. After all, he has no idea where they should go – if, indeed, they should go _anywhere._ Terra might be onto something, and if she's not, they'll just end up in another room in a place that has a potentially infinite number of them.

So they walk, and they walk, and they walk, and…

After the fifth or sixth hour, Sephiroth feels like his brain has stopped functioning. His world consists of putting one foot in front of the other, then alternating, and repeating that ad infinitum. He has lost track of how many rooms they've been through, how many times they've turned or even reversed their course. He stopped trying after the second hour.

Terra keeps walking with that same resolute sense of purpose, never bothering to explain how she knows where she's going – and Sephiroth definitely gets the sense that she does.

It could also be an insane delusion, and he could just be wasting his energy following her for no reason. Then again, if he tries to stop her, he's sure he would waste just as much energy keeping her in one place as he is using to follow her. Occasionally there has been a door barring their way; every time, Terra has thrown it open with a gesture, the force of her will often unseating the doors from their hinges.

When about nine hours have passed – nine hours of nothing but endless, monotonous walking – Terra stops in front of a door. When she tries the knob, the door is locked, which is not unusual. Most of the doors they've found so far have been locked. What _is _unusual is the fact that when Terra waves her hand to force the door open, it doesn't budge.

Sephiroth feels his mind start to work for the first time in ages. This door is resistant to her magic, or at least better-built than the others. This fact makes it different from every other door they've encountered so far. Maybe there's something different behind it, as well. The force of his eagerness driving him, Sephiroth gently guides Terra aside as he draws his sword.

He slashes into the door, which looks like it's made of wood, but the way his blade rebounds suggests it's actually some kind of stone. He tries again with no success, then hurtles against the door, smashing his shoulder into it. It remains stubbornly closed.

The air begins to heat up. Sephiroth turns to see Terra compressing energy into a rapidly-expanding glowing ball, which pulses gold-white as it grows in size. He withdraws several paces from the door; as soon as he is far enough away, Terra unleashes the attack. The sphere slams into the door with a blinding explosion. Sephiroth's eyes clear quickly, and he can see the door still standing there, untouched.

"Why is _this _one different?" he mutters to himself. He looks at Terra, who is staring at the door, a confused expression on her face. "Obviously she wants to go through it. And it's different because there's something important behind it, there has to be. Mateus wouldn't go to the trouble of creating an ultra-strong door to protect another meaningless room." Realizing he's talking to himself, Sephiroth frowns and closes his mouth. _I've been here for less than twelve hours and it's getting to me. Focus._

Withdrawing a few more paces, Sephiroth scrutinizes the door from a new angle in the vain hope he will have some kind of transcendental revelation that will show them the way out. Angry, he taps the blade of his weapon against his head, thinking.

Then he stops, a cold feeling running through him. He puts his fingers to his head; when he withdraws them, they come away with small red droplets on them. He's cut himself with his own weapon in a moment of idleness, and he didn't even feel it.

Sephiroth forces himself to focus. How could he have done that? He knows better than to play with the Masamune; its edge is sharp enough to cut steel. For that matter, he hasn't cut himself with it in years. What is _wrong _with him?

He eyes Terra, who looks bemused. When she'd still been under Kefka's control, she'd launched that same ball of golden-white energy at Auron, who had been sent flying, unconscious, by the impact. He'd felt the force of it even from a good distance away. But now he'd been even closer than before and he hadn't felt the impact. Unless the door was made of some truly impenetrable substance, it should at least be cracked.

Sephiroth walks over to the door, places his hand flat against it. He can feel the texture of the stone through his glove, but it seems distant, somehow muted. Removing his glove lets him feel the coolness of the stone, but that sensation is also diffuse.

"Terra," he says. "I think there's something going on here." He gestures to the walls. "I'm having trouble concentrating. Your spells aren't as good as they used to be. I'm beginning to feel things less acutely, and I'm willing to bet you are as well. It seems like we're having energy sapped straight from our minds, doesn't it?"

She nods at him, seeming to have come to the same conclusion.

"I think Pandemonium isn't just an endless pocket universe," Sephiroth says. "I think it's alive.

"And it's feeding on us."


	17. Chapter XVII

Wow, this is still updating? I'm a bad man, I know. Thanks for sticking with me. This one's actually extra-long because I love you and feel bad about spurning you. Enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter XVII**

"Do you remember your first time?" Genesis asks.

Sephiroth leans back in his chair, raising a silvery brow. "You came down to my office to ask me this why?"

"I heard your speech to the recruits," Genesis replies, seating himself on the other side of Sephiroth's desk. "You told them it would eventually come, and you warned them of the effect it would have on them – but you never told them about your first."

"I know," Sephiroth says with a flat stare, returning to his work.

Genesis lets the silence build for a long minute until Sephiroth sets down his pen slightly harder than necessary in exasperation. "And you want to hear about it anyway."

"Unless you're not interested in talking to me…" Genesis says with a smirk.

"If you'll give me some peace for the rest of the day in exchange," Sephiroth says.

"Agreed."

"Tell me something, though. Why? I don't understand your interest."

"Indulge me. You know how insatiably curious I am."

"That's not a straight answer."

"Did I say you'd get one?"

Sephiroth shrugs. "Fine." He rubs at his temples, trying to focus. It's been difficult for him lately; there seems to be a buzzing in the back of his mind, constantly distracting him from his work. As soon as he starts trying to recall the details, however, the buzzing fades away and he feels himself grow sharper, clarity returning.

So he relaxes, and he remembers, and he tells Genesis about the first time he killed a man.

* * *

"Let me say again that it's just wonderful to have you here with us in Midgar now," President Shin-Ra said in his rumbling basso voice. "I imagine it's a little different from where you've been growing up, eh, my boy?"

Sephiroth nodded. He stood in front of the man's desk, dressed in his best formal wear – a black leather jumpsuit without any ostentation. Behind him was Hojo, looking much more uncomfortable in a proper suit.

At nine years old, Sephiroth was impressively developed, looking and acting more like a fourteen-year-old. He stood nearly five and a half feet tall, his muscle tone was excellent, and his mental acuity was astounding. He understood that the fat man on the other side of the large desk was the most powerful man in the world, and he understood precisely why. Fear. Power. Money. This last one was the most unfamiliar to him, but he grasped the concept quite easily. People were imperfect beings, and in order to regulate their interactions where mutually desirable property was involved, a system of currency had been created, where that currency served as a sort of placeholder, a mutable stand-in for property.

President Shin-Ra had, therefore, the most property in the entire world. This meant that Sephiroth was only supposed to speak to him when the old man asked a question that required more than a yes or no, and otherwise he would stand there silently and nod at everything the old man said. Hojo had told him as much. He was a small man, only concerned with his own projects and advancement, and as such, Sephiroth knew not to mistake the warning for sentimentality; if he angered President Shin-Ra, that would bring disfavor squarely down on Hojo's shoulders.

He had considered disobeying, briefly, but then thought of the painful injections and tests that Hojo would run out of spite if he did. So he stood in front of the President's desk, and he nodded, and he only spoke when questioned in-depth.

Hojo stood behind him, letting the President talk at Sephiroth. He had the nervous air of somebody who had things to be doing but was stuck being inactive. Sephiroth could hear the rustle of the man's clothes as he shifted from one foot to another, obviously irritated at the amount of time the interview was taking.

"You'll have your own room on the thirtieth floor," President Shin-Ra continued. "The floors above it are still under construction, I'm afraid, else we'd house you somewhere higher up. And if you want to go out into the city, all you'll have to do is ask Hojo for permission, and if he thinks it's fine, you'll be accompanied by some of the talented men and women of the Turks – solely for your protection, of course. You'll also begin to receive advanced training from them, as a supplement to your existing regimen."

Sephiroth nodded again. The prospect of being able to explore Midgar was a fascinating one, he had to admit. When they had come in by airship from the laboratory where he'd spent most of his life – he didn't know the place's actual location – he'd stared, transfixed by the sight of the immense metropolis. Even half-completed, the city was an impressive sight. The partial skeleton of the Shin-Ra Tower thrust itself up from the mostly-finished Plate, and from beneath the Plate gleamed the lights of thousands of buildings in what was now beginning to be known as the slums.

"I have great faith in the contributions you'll make to this company," President Shin-Ra said. "If you need anything, you just ask Hojo, and he'll relay the request to me, all right?"

Sephiroth gave yet another nod, suppressing a smirk at the thought of Hojo going out of his way to relay anything to the old man. Hojo was absolutely obsessed with his work. The only reason he had claimed guardianship of Sephiroth was so he could be transferred here to Midgar, where the facilities were more secure and better-equipped. All of Sephiroth's daily activities – training, education, drills – were handled by other members of staff.

"Excellent. I'll be seeing you around, then." President Shin-Ra smiled one more time, a hollow expression that did not reach his eyes, before nodding to Hojo in dismissal. The scientist rushed out of the office without another word, obviously eager to get back down to the twentieth floor and continue whatever twisted work he was up to now.

For his part, Sephiroth left the office, looked at the men in dark suits and sunglasses outside it, and said, "I'm going out into the city. Escort me or your employer will be upset with you." He figured he could get away with not asking Hojo this once, before the Turks were made aware of that prerequisite.

The two Turks exchanged a look, then fell seamlessly into step behind Sephiroth as he made for the elevator.

He told it to take him down to the ground floor. Then he asked one of the Turks, "How do I get down beneath the Plate?"

"That's not a good idea," the Turk replied.

"I didn't ask for your opinion, just how."

The two men exchanged another glance. "We're authorized to keep you from doing anything reckless while in the city," the other one pointed out. "And you have no authority to countermand those orders."

"True, but as long as you stay close to me, there won't be any trouble. And I can assure you that there will be if I'm not allowed to see the slums I've read so much about."

That glance again. "Where do you want to go?"

Sephiroth thought back to the newspapers he'd carefully stolen from employees at the lab and then devoured, absorbing every scrap of information about the outside world he could. The employees had had them couriered in from various cities, as no paper actually went anywhere near the lab. Throughout all the papers, there had been many articles all referencing the same location – a place in the slums, a colorful place of shady dealings and unpredictable adventures.

"Let's go to Wall Market," he said.

* * *

It took a great deal more cajoling and veiled threats, but eventually the Turks promised him that they could go to Wall Market for an hour as long as he remained under their supervision at all times and agreed to follow their lead on what buildings were safe to enter.

When they arrived, he told them to meet him back at the entrance to the market in two hours. Then, as the Turks exchanged their glance again – this time, Sephiroth noted, it was one of confusion – he melted into the crowd faster than either of them could grab him.

He heard their shouts, but they faded into the background as he moved quickly and efficiently through the sea of people, the sights and smells and sounds of the place almost overwhelming in their variety and intensity. Potential customers bickered with vendors over the prices of items, ordered food, talked about the economy – Sephiroth, who could normally listen to several conversations at once, quickly lost track of what everyone was saying, instead submerging himself in the flow of the market.

Sephiroth eventually found himself in front of an especially large building with huge glowing neon signs, many of which depicted the feminine form in an idealized fashion. There were also two pictures of large creatures with wings and yellow and black stripes; Sephiroth assumed these were some kind of insect, having never seen a honeybee before. A large man stood between him and the door; he took one look at Sephiroth and shook his head before telling him to move along, kid.

Not particularly surprised that there were buildings he wasn't allowed into, Sephiroth headed north from there. A small establishment claimed to have food from a place he'd never heard of, so he went inside and ordered. As it turned out, the food was just Wutainese cuisine with a different name, but he imagined that most people who came to Wall Market had never left Midgar and had no idea what Wutai was even like. He'd never been there himself, of course, but he'd read all about it in the books Professor Gast would occasionally send him. Someday, Sephiroth hoped, he would be able to visit and spend some time there.

He paid the man who gave him the food – an unfamiliar action, but one with which he expected to become familiar – before stepping back out into the chaos of Wall Market. He saw his erstwhile bodyguards sweeping the crowds for him, so he ducked into an alleyway, moving through a short series of them before emerging out into another street. It was just as colorful and loud as the rest of Wall Market, so he kept exploring.

Sephiroth was inspecting a collection of bangles that a street merchant claimed were made of pure mythril – in fact, they were cheap silver, but he was entertained by the lengths to which the man went to keep up the façade – when he heard somebody asking for help.

He dropped the bangle he'd been handling on its siblings, eliciting a cry of dismay from the merchant, which he ignored. A quick sweep of the crowd revealed the sound was coming from a young girl in the middle of the road, asking passersby if they could give her directions. She looked, to Sephiroth's eye, about fifteen, with pale skin, blue eyes, and long, curling tresses of blonde hair. She wore a white, lacy blouse, a knee-length pink skirt, and sensible brown boots. Her pleas were being ignored by everyone who walked by; it seemed that the locals were too jaded to want to help.

Hojo had never said anything about right or wrong – Sephiroth was fairly sure that the man was unacquainted with the concepts. Professor Gast, however, had told Sephiroth that he should try to do good, and as he was specially gifted, he would be able to do a lot of good indeed if he applied himself. Sephiroth wasn't in familiar territory by any means, but he might be able to help the girl, and he saw no reason not to try.

So he walked right up to her and asked, "Can I help you?"

His question startled her, but she looked him up and down and he could see clear as day she'd decided to trust him right then and there – something so alien to his experience that it took him momentarily aback. "Yes!" she said. "Thank you so much! I'm looking for my friend. She told me to meet her outside the Honeybee Inn so we could try to get jobs there. Do you know where that is?"

Sephiroth thought back, but he didn't recall seeing any inns, and he was unsure what a honeybee looked like. "What sort of jobs?"

He was not sure why the girl flushed red at this point until she went on to say, "Well, you know, not like _job _jobs there. We heard they need younger girls to cook and clean and do waitressing and stuff."

It took several leaps of logic, but Sephiroth managed to puzzle it out. "I passed by a large brothel with a lot of neon signs earlier and pictures of insects that I think might have been honeybees. Might that be the place?"

The girl flushed an even deeper shade of red, but she managed a nod. "I think so. Could you show me the way? It was stupid of me to get lost here, I know, but…"

Sephiroth shrugged. "Follow me."

"I'm Tamara," the girl offered. "But my friends call me Tara."

"Sephiroth," he replied over his shoulder.

"What do you friends call you?"

He paused in mid-stride for a moment. "Just Sephiroth," he said, resuming his pace.

"That's an interesting name."

"Thank you." He headed back down the street and into the twisting maze of alleyways, Tara not far behind him. After a wrong turn or two, he managed to get his bearings again. As he rounded the last bend, expecting to see the lights of the restaurant where he'd eaten, he instead found himself staring into the face of another boy.

He had short-cropped blonde hair and brown eyes. He wore ragged clothing that hung loosely on his skinny frame and had a pair of metal nunchaku at his belt. He was sixteen years old if he was a day. At the sight of Sephiroth and Tara, his lips peeled back from his yellowed teeth in a grin.

"Get 'em!"

In an instant, the alleyway was swarming with boys, none of them younger than thirteen or older than seventeen. There were fifteen of them in all. Sephiroth, having never been mugged by a gang before, was momentarily confused; however, when he caught sight of the terror on Tara's face, he lashed out at the nearest boy. The blow landed with a terrific impact in the boy's solar plexus; he staggered back, clutching at his chest, lungs desperately working as his diaphragm went into spasms. Sephiroth ducked underneath another boy's wild swing, bringing up his knee into the boy's groin in the same motion. He felt a glimmer of satisfaction as he watched his opponent crumple, screaming, but a moment later the screams were matched and then exceeded by Tara's.

Sephiroth whirled to get her back into view. Most of the boys had gone straight for her. They were tearing at her clothes, trying to strip her in the middle of the alley. Sephiroth had learned about brothels from Professor Gast, during the same talk in which he'd learned about sex; in that talk, he'd also learned about rape. The danger of the situation clicked into place in Sephiroth's mind as one of the boys managed to tear off a long strip of cloth from the hem of Tara's blouse, hooting as he did.

He waded into their midst, cold fury mounting in him. With casual grace, he cracked two of their skulls together, then twisted away from a retaliatory blow and boxed the attacker's ears, sending him to the ground. Sephiroth grabbed another boy by the shoulder, got his fingers on the pressure points his instructors had taught him about, and squeezed with all his enhanced strength. The boy collapsed, screaming for his mother and grabbing at himself.

Then pain exploded across the back of Sephiroth's skull. He staggered, turning the motion into an about-face, just in time to see the gang leader whirl his nunchaku around into another solid blow, this time to the side of Sephiroth's head. The world spun and his vision blurred. Reacting with the speed engendered by his years of training, Sephiroth got an arm in the way of the next strike, but the impact rang out against his skin and threw him to the side, ruining his follow-up strike. He fell to one knee, head pounding. More of the boys, sensing weakness, piled on top of Sephiroth, pummeling him with their fists or rocks they'd snatched up. He bodily hurled two of them away, but as he did so the nunchaku smashed a blazing line of agony across his ribcage. The gang kept attacking, Tara kept screaming, Sephiroth could not see or think –

Another ripping sound. "I got her shirt!" he heard one of the boys shout.

Something snapped inside him.

Unmoved by pain or pity, Sephiroth opened his eyes – _he'd shut them, how pathetic – _and snatched the arm of the nunchaku out of the air as it arced toward him. The gang leader looked surprised for a moment; then the surprise became fear as Sephiroth yanked the weapon out of his grasp. He'd never used a pair of nunchaku outside of training sessions, and they were not his best weapon, but his instructors had described him as "proficient" in their use. This pair had an especially long chain, useful for grappling or disarming – or large, sweeping strikes.

Three of the gang members staggered away from Sephiroth, bleeding from their noses and mouths, as he smashed them across their faces in a lightning-fast sweep. He lashed out in a side kick which took the leader off his feet, removing him from the fight for the moment. Then he turned his attention to the swarm of boys still surrounding Tara.

He tore into them, a storm of blunt and bloody steel. Cracking bones reverberated through the chain and into the arm Sephiroth held as he took down foe after foe, his fury not abating even as their hooting turned to cries of pain.

All of Sephiroth's senses were hyper-alert; he had never felt so keenly or with such clarity. From behind him, he heard the tiny exhalation accompanying a punch as though it were right in his ear; he sidestepped easily, turning as he did. The gang leader, left open by the strike, met Sephiroth's eyes, and in that instant he knew he was doomed.

With a snarl, Sephiroth brought the nunchaku up, slapping the chain across the side of the boy's neck, just above his collarbone. The arm on the other end of the chain curved around in a tight orbit before Sephiroth caught it with his off-hand, drawing the chain into a closed ring around his enemy's throat even as he twisted around to stand behind the boy.

Then he gave both ends of the nunchaku a savage wrench.

All the other boys who were still standing stopped and stared as their leader clutched at his throat, his eyes bulging in his sockets as he croaked for air. Sephiroth loosened his grip, pulled the chain higher up on the boy's neck to just below his jaw, and gave another wrench. Then he let go of the nunchaku; there was no need to keep strangling the boy when his larynx had been crushed and his trachea severed.

It took a long time for the boy to die. Sephiroth stood over him, watching his lips turn blue, his eyes go dull, his muscles twitching as he struggled to breathe. All the other boys watched as well, rooted to the spot with terrible, morbid fascination.

After five minutes, Sephiroth said, "Leave." They ran, some of them crying, some of them deathly silent. He moved over to Tara, who was collapsed against a wall, taking short, panting breaths, still gripped by animal fear. Unfeeling, he picked up her blouse, which was dirty and torn but better than nothing. "Here." She pulled it back over her head without a word, then mutely followed him out of the alley.

As she'd said, her friend was waiting for her just outside the Honeybee Inn. When she saw the two of them, she ran up, eyes wide with shock. "Tara, are you all right? Who is this guy?"

"Tara will be fine," Sephiroth interjected. "But you two should go home now, and never come back here. Tara can tell you more when she's ready." Without another word, he turned on his heel, heading back toward the entrance to Wall Market where the Turks were no doubt waiting for him.

That was the last he saw of Tara, and the first time he killed a man.

* * *

Sephiroth finishes telling Genesis his story, only he realizes he's not telling it so much as remembering it, and it's not Genesis he's remembering it to, it's a very beautiful girl and a worried-looking young man with hazel eyes and silver hair and a colorful bandanna and why are they leaning over him?

"He's waking up," Terra says.

"Good," Firion replies. "I think he might make it after all."

Sephiroth manages to raise an eyebrow. "Of course I am," he whispers.

The ground trembles as Pandemonium quakes with anger.


	18. Chapter XVIII

**Chapter XVIII**

Sephiroth's head hurts and his vision is still a little blurry, but the numbness is gone from his mind. He can focus on individual details again and follow trains of thought to their conclusions. Something tells him that this is an improvement over his condition only an hour ago.

"Well, it looks like your plan worked," Firion says. He falls back into a sitting position, no longer having to lean over Sephiroth. "Thought we'd lost you for a while there, friend." Now that Sephiroth has a chance to look at him more closely, the other man has a staggering array of weaponry – Sephiroth sees a bow, a sword, an axe, several knives, a spear, and several other implements like rope that are no doubt useful in some practical way.

"Pandemonium?" Sephiroth asks.

Firion nods. "Once you realized exactly what this place does to you, it gave up being subtle about it and started trying to eat your mind whole. You've got a very strong will, but it was just a matter of time before you had to give in."

"So Terra calling up my memories was the cure?"

"You have to be able to hold onto yourself. I know what I'm fighting for, and that lets me resist the effects of this place." Firion holds out a hand; in a flash of pink light, a wild rose materializes in it. "This is my dream. I've always got it with me, and nobody can take it away. You don't have a dream, though, or a reason you're fighting. At least, not one you keep with you. We had to find one."

Sephiroth opens his mouth to contradict this somewhat-rude statement, then stop short when he realizes it's true. He has always fought Shin-Ra's battles against Shin-Ra's enemies because it was his place. This is what he is here to do, and so he does it.

"So you found the one time I killed a man for myself," he says.

"Not just for you," Firion corrects him. "For Tara." He gestures in Terra's direction. "She told me you probably could have killed her when she was under Kefka's control, but you didn't. For some reason you were unwilling, even after you showed you had no mercy for Ultimecia. So she went into your mind and found the reason, one even you weren't aware of – you wanted to protect her."

The idea makes him want to throw up, it's so saccharine, but there it is. It makes sense in that bones-deep, undeniable way that Sephiroth knows very well. His own resistance to it only confirms it. "Fine. Thank you for your assistance."

Firion shrugs. "I didn't do anything. Thank her."

Sephiroth gets to his feet. Terra is studying the impassable door, looking for some fault line or other weakness that they can exploit. "Terra," he says. "Thank you."

She turns, looks him up and down once, nods, goes back to the door.

"She has the right idea," Firion says, getting to his feet. "I've been here a little longer than you, and every door in this place opened for me – except this one. I was retracing my steps when I heard the two of you, so I came and found her trying to wake you up after you'd fallen unconscious."

Sephiroth places a hand against the door. His senses are no longer numb; he can feel it with his customary sharpness. It still feels like cool stone. He can recall several times where he's had no choice in the field but to punch straight through a stone or brick wall. Why is this one door impenetrable?

Then, out of nowhere, an idea occurs to him.

"Let's all try opening the door together," he says.

Terra just looks at him. Firion has a similar reaction, but he voices it. "And this is going to make a difference how?"

"I can't explain why I think this might work," Sephiroth says. "I just _do. _It certainly can't hurt."

By way of acquiescence, Terra places her hand on the doorknob. Firion steps forward a moment later. Sephiroth places his own black-gloved hand atop theirs. "All right. Turn it."

The door remains locked.

"I can see this was a good idea," Firion says, his tone a little too bright.

"Think of what makes you immune to this place," Sephiroth instructs them, ignoring his new companion. "Firion, concentrate on your wild rose. Terra, you have something you're fighting for; think of that. As for me, I suppose I'll concentrate on protecting you." He still feels foolish saying it, but there is an unshakable conviction in him that this is right.

"Whatever you say," Firion accedes; Terra just nods before closing her eyes. The three of them stand there for a moment, focusing on their own dreams and ambitions and goals – no matter how new or stupid they seem, Sephiroth firmly reminds himself.

"All right," he says. "Turn the knob."

The door opens. Beyond it is the Forest.

* * *

Auron smashes into one of the walls of the castle. His entire body hurts, the combination of dozens of aches, cuts, bruises, and sprains. He and Jecht have been fighting for the better part of three days now.

This is possible for Auron because he does not need to eat and drink like normal men any longer, but he doesn't understand Jecht's resilience. The blitzer has not once shown any signs of tiring, needing to stop for nourishment, anything. He has also collected far fewer injuries over the course of the fight than Auron has, and the difference is beginning to show.

Auron staggers forward, throwing his feet apart to a wider stance than normal to keep his balance. Jecht's last blow didn't land, but blocking it sent him flying seventy feet to crash into the stone of one of the castle's battlements. Despite this, his senses are operating with an unusual level of clarity; he can smell the grass beneath his feet, hear the wind rustling through this extra-dimensional space.

More importantly, he is finally beginning to see the motes of light created by the impact of his will and Jecht's. At first they were tiny points of movement in his peripheral vision, but now he can see them exploding into being every time he and Jecht attack one another. He can see them hang in the air for long moments before fading out into the universe. Jecht can obviously see them already, but none of them are being drawn toward him. He must not be trying to absorb them himself.

The blitzer shoulders his massive sword as he starts walking across the grass toward Auron. "You seein' 'em yet?"

Auron gulps in a lungful of air – he doesn't need to breathe, but talking requires it. "Yes. Only for a few moments after an attack, but I can see them."

"They only last for a few moments anyway," Jecht says. "That was the first step. The second is just wantin' to absorb them."

"That's it?" Auron asks.

"Of course! That's all the first step was, too – just wantin'. This place can't help but know what you want, and if you want it hard enough you'll get it. It's just a question of perseverance!"

Auron can't help but chuckle at that. "If only it were so simple everywhere."

Jecht nods. "If wishes were chocobos we'd all eat 'em. Let's go!" His ambling pace becomes a charge; Auron has just enough time to bring his sword up to block the attack. It throws him back, but he manages to keep his feet. As the collision of his will and Jecht's explodes into dozens of motes of light, Auron focuses on them, wants them to come to him. They change course, spiraling through the air to collide with his chest, where they vanish with a brief glow.

He doesn't feel any different, but he knows that something has changed deep within him – there is a power there waiting to be unlocked, if only he fans its flames.

"How much juice that give ya? Ten, maybe twenty percent?" Jecht asks.

Auron frowns at the idea of quantifying something this vague, but when he concentrates he can indeed assign a rough percentage to how much power he thinks he's absorbed out of his potential maximum. It feels like saying he's fifty percent full after eating dinner – a strange notion, but not an inaccurate one. "Twenty."

"All right! Four or five more and you'll be set!" Jecht leaps at him, his sword glowing a dull orange with the force of his battle-energy. He swings the blade in a vicious succession of horizontal sweeps at a speed that defies the hundred-pound heft of his weapon. Rather than try to block, Auron forces his aching body into action, battering down each of Jecht's attacks with an assault of his own. Each collision of their blades produces a bountiful harvest of energy; by the fifth repetition Auron feels the motes he absorbs are just being wasted.

He draws back several paces. "I'm ready," he says.

"Great!" Jecht exclaims. With that, he slams his sword end-first into the ground, where it sticks up like a bizarre road marker. "I don't know about you, but I feel like taking a break before we really get down to it. What say we call it a day and pick up tomorrow morning at dawn?"

There is no visible light source, but the sky in which the castle hangs brightens and darkens as though there were a sun passing through it, and right now it is approaching dusk. Auron, grateful for the opportunity to rest, nods. "Fine. That seems reasonable." He plants his sword in the ground next to Jecht's. "Tomorrow, then."

"Hey, Auron. One thing."

"Yes?"

Jecht looks at him, his expression grave. Auron feels like they're back in Zanarkand, just as Jecht is about to walk through Yunalesca's door and become a Fayth, forever lost to the world of men.

"If you can make it through this – if you and your friend make it to the point where you can actually change something – I want you to do me a favor."

"Name it."

"I don't think getting rid of this place will be easy. It might not even be possible. And if that's the case… well. Lemme fight for the good guys again. So we'll never have to go through something like this another time."

Auron feels his mouth twitch into a small smile. The request is so very much like his old friend, a little bright spot of familiarity in the strange and absurd surroundings he's been in for what seems like a lifetime.

"I will."

* * *

"How did you know?" Firion asks as the three of them step into the Forest, the door vanishing behind them.

"The idea just came to me," Sephiroth replies. "If I were a betting man –"

"You're not?"

"If I were a betting man," he continues, ignoring the interruption, "I would say something planted it in my mind. Something that didn't want to see us die in Pandemonium."

He looks at Terra, who says one word: "Shinryu."

"What? Who's that?" Firion asks.

"Shinryu is the reason we're all here," Sephiroth tells him, deciding to truncate the lengthy explanation. "He's the reason Cosmos and Chaos are using us to fight each another – he gains strength every time we kill one another in battle. I think that Mateus created Pandemonium as a way around this; an infinite prison that kills you slowly with no way to fight it. Even though we discovered its weakness, without that door, we would have died of thirst eventually."

"So why did Mateus put an exit in his perfect prison?"

Sephiroth smirks. "I think Shinryu put it there himself, and the reason it wouldn't open at first was because he wanted all of us to escape together, firm in our convictions. It makes for better conflict that way."

Obviously, Firion does not take well to being used. He puts his hand against a tree to support himself, his face drawn. "You're telling me that we're just – I don't know, potions for this Shinryu guy to drink?"

_Some things really do hold constant in all worlds, _Sephiroth notes with a small flash of humor. "And the only way out of it is to fight and risk being just that. But I think we have a chance, Firion. I think we can get out of this trap and back to our own worlds." He places a hand on the other man's shoulder. "Are you with me?"

Firion meets his gaze, his eyes burning with resolve. "You have my bow. And various other weapons."

Sephiroth nods. "Good." He eyes the sky of the Forest, which is rapidly approaching dusk.

"We'll need them all before we see the end of this."


	19. Chapter XIX

**Chapter XIX**

Dawn.

Auron opens his good eye as the sky begins to brighten. It's a strange effect, bereft as it is of any actual source of light, but it serves its purpose.

He spent the night on the grass at the foot of the tallest tower in the sky. Looking across the open space of the Interdimensional Rift, he can see that Jecht enjoyed similar accommodations at the base of the shortest tower.

They meet atop the battlements of the large central structure, a castle without doors or windows; it might as well be a huge rock for all the functional aspects of a castle it possesses. In the dawn light, Auron can see heavy bags under Jecht's eyes.

"Didn't sleep well?" he asks.

Jecht shakes his head. "I can never sleep well before a fight. You know that."

"I don't like to make assumptions. I thought you might have changed."

"Nah. Nah, I don't think so."

They stand there in silence for a moment, regarding one another. Finally, Auron takes his blade in hand, resting it on his shoulder. "So. Here we are."

Jecht's sword is too sharp to rest on his shoulder, so he puts its point against the ground. "Yep."

"I don't believe I ever thanked you for explaining this technique to me. So thank you."

With an uncomfortable expression, the blitzer waves Auron's statement aside. "Don't worry about it. I know you'd've done the same for me."

They stare at one another for a long minute, neither one of them wanting to make the first move. Then, just when the tension is about to become unbearable, Auron sees the slightest twitch in Jecht's expression and knows the man is about to lose his nerve.

So he does the only thing a good friend can in these circumstances. He leaps forward in a blazing-fast swing at Jecht's head. "STRIKE!" he bellows.

Jecht ducks the attack, punches Auron in the gut with his gauntleted hand. The blow rings out, an impressively loud sound in the otherwise-silent Interdimensional Rift, but Auron twists with it, flowing with the force of the attack. He keeps his eye on Jecht's sword; that's where the major damage is going to come from.

He's not disappointed. Jecht follows up his punch with a brutal, low chop at Auron's feet, which the guardian leaps over. The blade keeps going, embedding itself in the battlement's low wall, spiderwebbing the stone with cracks. Auron swings down as he lands, trying to split Jecht's skull in two. His old friend has no way to avoid the attack completely; he'll either end up with Auron's sword between his eyes or buried deeply in one of his shoulders.

Neither of these things happen. Instead, the air around Jecht explodes with crackling energy, the force of which destroys Auron's strike. He stumbles back, trying to get control of his sword again before –

He is tumbling through the air, the world is spinning around him, every effort he makes to stabilize his descent is thwarted by another one of Jecht's appendages smashing into him with meteoric force. Auron, reeling from the effects of a dozen hammerblows, manages to at least get himself turned around the right way just in time to catch a slam from the blunt side of Jecht's sword.

Now he is picking himself up from a large crater blown into the grass and dirt, events have become disorderly and he can't even see his enemy. There was the blow, and now he is standing, but where was the fall, where was the collision? He can't remember, it's happening so fast and the pain is so overwhelming.

Then, in a frozen moment of clarity, Jecht is in front of him, utterly transfigured.

His friend's bronze skin has darkened to the color of onyx, his black hair and beard turned utterly white. His eyes burn with a violet fire. His hands and feet have sprouted talons and his gauntleted hand has tripled in size, becoming an armored monstrosity capable of crushing a man's head within its fingers. A dozen thick spikes, seemingly made of bone, have sprouted from Jecht's back, most of them flaring out to his sides; the rest rise to either side of his head. On his chest, his blitzball tattoo glows pure white, pulsing with energy.

Auron has seen this before. Jecht's metamorphosis brings out Braska's Final Aeon.

Then Jecht has his sword in his hand again; he is thrusting at Auron's head with it, a weapon designed to slash and crush. Auron knows it doesn't matter – his skull will cave in and pulverize his brain from the sheer force of the blow. What little he saw of Gabranth's metamorphosis told him that it was mostly energy-based, allowing him to channel pure force into his attacks; Kuja's, on the other hand, allowed him to tap into some primordial source of magic and undergo a physical transformation, one no doubt significant to him.

Jecht's metamorphosis recalls his final doom, and is pure, raw power.

Auron does the only thing he can, given the circumstances. He reaches deep inside himself, feels the power stored there, and lets it loose.

Just as Jecht's transformation had blown Auron's attack off-course, the air around Auron explodes into brilliant energy. Jecht's sword is actually ripped from his grasp, sent flying away until it sinks into the stone wall of the castle.

Auron looks down at himself. There doesn't seem to be a physical change of any sort at first. He is still wearing his red coat, he hasn't changed color or grown extra limbs, his eyes still work –

_My eye._

He can see out of both of them. Incredulous, Auron begins to reach with his free hand to feel his restored right eye, but then he realizes his free hand isn't free at all. He's gripping something in it.

The something turns out to be a second sword, identical to his first. Except both of them are lighter than before – light enough for him to wield them in one hand easily. Then, at last, he notices the chain running between their pommels, connecting them. It is twice as long as he is tall, and something tells him it can get longer or shorter.

Auron shifts into a more appropriate ready stance, holding his swords angled out and toward the ground on either side of him, the chain between them falling behind him, coiled on the grass. He can feel his wounds knitting themselves up.

For a split second, Jecht appraises him, looks at the swords and the chain and the miraculously restored eye. Then he bolts for his sword, ripping it out of the wall with one tug, his iron-hard muscles hardly even straining. Still, he is too slow; even as he turns, Auron shifts all the slack to his left-hand sword, whirls it once above his head to give it momentum, and hurls it at Jecht in a sweeping arc.

The blitzer ducks the attack, the razor edge of the blade cleaving through his hair instead of his skull. He seizes what he sees as an opportunity – an opening in Auron's defenses – to charge, flames exploding into being all along the edges of his sword.

But Auron is quickly grasping the true strength of his metamorphosis. He is never unprotected. Even as Jecht rushes at him beneath the path of the arcing chain, Auron gives it a sharp tug. He brings his right-hand sword around in an attack that batters away Jecht's sword, making it miss his torso by the barest of margins. Jecht still manages to slam his shoulder into Auron's chest, but that victory proves short-lived as Auron's left-hand sword buries itself point-first in his back.

The dense, bonelike protrusions from Jecht's back protect him a little, but he still roars with pain, blood spurting from the wound. He bellows again as Auron disengages his right-hand sword to bring it across his friend's chest in a cut that lays the flesh open to the bone. Sparks fly from the edge of the blade as it scrapes across Jecht's ribs, unable to penetrate. Jecht's raw power is more than simple strength, Auron notes; it is toughness. At this point, none of his friend's bones are likely to break from any force he can muster.

Jecht leaps away from Auron; the guardian gives the chain a sharp yank as he does, ripping his left-hand sword free in a spray of blood. Jecht howls, a sound of pure rage, and charges again.

Auron can read all of his attacks instantly. He lets both his swords hang from a small length of chain, then spins them up into whirling planes of razor-sharp edges. In one smooth motion, he steps out of the range of Jecht's swing at his waist and slices both his swords across Jecht's sword arm. Again, the weapons cut straight to the impenetrable bone; Auron watches Jecht's weapon fly from his grasp as his hand goes limp, his tendons severed.

Undaunted, the blitzer rushes in with a spinning kick that Auron easily ducks, but he follows up with a vicious thrust of his enormous gauntleted arm. The steel fingers, each the size of Auron's forearm, close around his head and squeeze.

Wracked with pain, Auron gives each end of the chain a yank, bringing his swords' grips back into his hands. He brings them up in mirrored chops at Jecht's arm, but they rebound from the surface of Jecht's skin – that, or his gauntlet; perhaps there is no difference at this point. He can feel his skull about to cave in, there's no way he can deal a mortal blow to Jecht with his unbreakable bones, he can't struggle free –

_He still feels pain._

Auron has never tried to inflict maximum amounts of agony with his attacks, so this is a gamble. With his right hand, he cuts at Jecht's face, hoping to slice open one or both of his eyes, and with his left, he brings the broad side of his sword up into Jecht's groin.

The swipe at Jecht's eyes misses, but apparently only Jecht's bones are indestructible – the cartilage in his nose shatters as Auron's sword sweeps through it. At the same time, Auron can feel the force of his blow to Jecht's groin resonate throughout his thick body, all the way up into his gauntleted arm. He hears Jecht gasp as the fingers around Auron's head slacken just for a moment.

Auron rips free of them, dances away, whirling his swords about him by their chains. Jecht's strength vastly outclasses his own; he can't afford to grapple with him. All he can do is slice his old friend to ribbons from a distance and hope that an Aeon can succumb to blood loss.

He starts doing just that, lashing out with his swords in one-two assaults from ten feet away, the chain between them spontaneously growing in length to allow the maneuver. Jecht sweeps both away with his gauntleted arm, using it as a shield, as he rushes forward to pick up his sword. Auron can see that Jecht also has faster regeneration than he does; the wounds he took at the beginning of the fight are only now fully healed, while Jecht's tendons have knitted themselves back together in seconds. Suddenly, hoping for Jecht to succumb to blood loss seems less wise.

_I can slice apart his internal organs, but he'll probably regenerate them, too, and I can't inflict a mortal blow when his bones won't break._

Acting on instinct, Auron wrestles his swords back into line. He slices down with his right, making Jecht pull up short to avoid the attack, as he sweeps his left out to land beneath Jecht's blade. With a whirl of his arm, he sends a wave down the chain, which wraps neatly around the handle of Jecht's sword. Then he pulls it back in, catches Jecht's blade, and hurls it off the edge of the castle grounds into oblivion.

"It's over, Jecht," he says, yanking on the chain to pull his swords back into his hands. "No matter how tough you are, I'll never let you get close enough to grapple with me again. I'll take you apart from outside your range, unbreakable bones or no, and eventually you'll have to run out of –"

The word "strength" dies on his lips as he feels the air around him cool. The vision in his right eye suddenly goes dark. His extra sword and the chain disappear in a flash of light, leaving him with the one, which is now heavy once more. He's run out of power.

Jecht, still in the aspect of the Final Aeon, visibly gathers his power. The tattoo on his chest explodes with light so brilliant Auron has to throw up his hand to cover his eye for a moment. Something blocks the light, so he lowers his hand. Jecht is literally pulling another sword out of his chest.

The blade comes free with a spray of blood, the wound healing before Auron's eyes.

"Looks like you're out," Jecht says. "Round two."

He charges, and Auron is swept up in the force of it.


	20. Chapter XX

**Chapter XX**

Defeated, Auron falls.

There is an enormous rent in his torso, diagonally bisecting his chest. If he could somehow crane his neck to a position where he could look into it, he is sure he would see his ribs. His heart no longer beats within his chest, but blood still flows in his veins; it sprays from the wound in a great arc. Everything is crystal-clear. Auron can see with perfect clarity the flames still burning in his friend's transfigured eyes, eyes that show no sign of recognition or mercy.

Why has he lost? The answer seems obvious: he wasn't able to maintain his metamorphosis as long as Jecht. But why? In this moment of crystal-clarity, the answer becomes obvious. Auron can see the clash of their wills exploding into particles of energy, which arc from his chest along with his blood. He can follow their paths – all of which lead to Jecht. When he transformed, Auron forgot to continue absorbing the energy created from their conflicting wills. Jecht did not.

_And because he was getting all of it, he is still in his Final Aeon aspect, and I am just dead again. Blind in one eye. Soon to be blind in both._

Jecht swings his sword down toward Auron's head.

* * *

"We'll need them all before we see the end of this," Sephiroth says to Firion.

It is at this point that Terra chooses to twitch. Sephiroth can see the movement out of the corner of his eye. He knows it means something; everything seems to with this girl.

Firion notices it too. "What's the matter?" he asks her.

Terra places a hand on both their heads. In his mind's eye, Sephiroth sees a castle and many towers floating in an endless sky, surrounded by portals to different worlds. He also feels a terrible urgency like a fire licking at the bottoms of his feet. He can't stay here; he has to move.

Then Terra turns away as if to set off through the Forest. This time, Sephiroth is fully aware of the transition. Faster than an ordinary human would be able to process, the trees vanish, the sky wheels overhead in a blur until it has turned bright blue, and the ground beneath their feet becomes the grey stone of the castle's battlements.

They have arrived just in time to see Auron, engaged in battle far below them on a field of grass, collapse onto his back, blood spraying from his chest. The thing he's fighting – Sephiroth has no idea what it could be, the only things that register are its humanoid form and the enormous sword it wields – raises its weapon above its head before bringing it down in a killing blow.

Sephiroth is running down the wall of the battlements faster than a man can fall as soon as he sees Auron's blood, but Firion is faster. His movements are like quicksilver. Suddenly his bow is in his hand, he is drawing an arrow of pure, shining force, and then he screams, "HIT!" as the projectile leaps from the bow to strike Auron's foe square in the back of its head.

As his vision is far more acute than a human being's, Sephiroth can see the arrow burn through hair and skin with ease even from his position several dozen feet above. The force of it sends the creature staggering forward, its strike thudding into the grass next to Auron's head instead of splitting it open. However, the arrow burns even brighter for a brief moment as it struggles and fails to penetrate the creature's skull; then it snuffs out, defeated.

Sephiroth leaps off the wall, curving his sword down to slice straight alongside the creature's spine, puncture its heart, and slide out between its ribs – assuming it has a bone structure similar to a man's. It has many bony protrusions extending from its back, all of which look tough, so Sephiroth aims for a spot between them.

Things go wrong very quickly. The creature's ribs are far larger than a human's would be – they are not only thicker, they actually wrap completely around the heart and lungs, forming a solid, impenetrable shield. They also seem to be impossibly dense; the Masamune strikes against them and refuses to go any farther. Sephiroth now has to deal with several feet more of his sword during his landing than he expected. He compensates easily enough, landing deftly on his feet in a low crouch, ready to throw himself out of the path of the creature's strike. The downside is that he has to let go of the Masamune to do this.

Then the creature turns around, making eye contact with him, and Sephiroth knows that this must be Jecht.

Sephiroth remembers Gabranth – the sudden, explosive increase in power, the new abilities he manifested afterward. He also remembers catching brief glimpses of Kuja while Auron fought him, and the terrifying physical transformation that the young man underwent. This has to be a metamorphosis of the same nature.

"Terra! See to Auron!" Sephiroth yells before Jecht roars, drowning out all other noise. He leaps forward in a berserker charge. Sephiroth jumps over him, grabbing the Masamune as he does so; he gives a sharp yank, clearing the sword from Jecht's body.

_I have to give her breathing room. _"Firion! To me!" Sephiroth shouts in between Jecht's roars. He ducks a wild swing of Jecht's sword, then exploits the opening to carve the man's torso with a half-dozen deep wounds. Every time, he feels the Masamune scrape fruitlessly against Jecht's ribs or spine. _His bones can't be broken, and I can clearly see him regenerating his wounds as I attack him. He's a monster._

Sephiroth focuses on Jecht's face, concentrating on getting away from him. He feels the dash hurl his body into the space above the abyss, with nothing but sky below him. There is a tower in the distance, the farthest structure away from the main castle; another two reverse dashes place him atop it. Firion is just a second behind him, landing with bow in hand. "What's the plan?" he asks. Both of them watch Jecht shoot through the air toward them, his passage marked by twin trails of flame. His dash is nowhere near as fast as theirs; whether this is because of his incredible mass or because he's having trouble focusing is an interesting academic question, but not one Sephiroth has time to pursue. "Nothing I have will work on him if my arrow didn't pierce. He's in Release Form right now."

"Release Form?"

"Everyone calls it something different. That's my name for it. If you don't know what it is I don't have time to explain."

"Can you do it?"

Their conversation is interrupted by Jecht slamming into the tower. The force of the collision sprays chips of stone everywhere while cracks spread through the structure. Sephiroth leaps out over the edge as the tower begins to break apart, then begins performing more reverse dashes to take him back to the main castle. Firion is hot on his heels.

They land as Jecht is just beginning to extricate himself from the debris, which rains down into the sky. Sephiroth doubts any of it will ever hit a bottom. Terra is bent over Auron, her hands pressed against his wound and glowing with healing power. "Can you do it?" he repeats.

"Being in Pandemonium drained me dry," Firion replies. "You need to absorb enough energy to trigger the transformation. Plus, he's eating it all up before I can even grab any. And even if I get enough energy to Release, it doesn't make me stronger. Mine unleashes my weapons' true potential – they're all Blood Weapons that let me absorb life-force I destroy. That won't do any good because this guy's overflowing with it."

"Wonderful." Now Jecht is heading toward them again. "Can we even beat him?"

"I can't. And I don't think you can either."

They begin to run up the castle wall, back toward the battlements, in order to draw Jecht away from Terra and Auron. Firion fires another energy arrow to keep his attention. "Auron and I both fought somebody who had Released," Sephiroth says as they run. "And we managed to come out on top. Why is Jecht's so overpowering?"

"People's power in their Release Forms can vary pretty wildly," Firion replies as they alight on the battlements, Jecht moments away. "Nobody knows why for sure, but I think it has to do with what you're fighting for. I know I get stronger when I'm fighting against somebody who wants to control people."

_So what's his secret? _Sephiroth wonders as Jecht lands heavily on the battlements. _What's giving him this overwhelming power?_

Jecht hurls his sword at them.

Sephiroth manages to sidestep, but Firion is not so quick. The sword catches him square in the chest. The sheer force of it lifts him off his feet; Sephiroth watches in a kind of detached dread as he speeds toward the wall where the battlement corners, thirty feet away. He can picture it: the sword will slam Firion into the wall before slicing straight through him, cutting him in two. And there is nothing Sephiroth can do.

Terra rises above the battlements, levitating on a wave of her own power, before pointing a hand at Firion. An enormous ice bolt coalesces in the air in front of her, then crosses the distance between her and Jecht's sword in a flash, smashing the weapon off-course. Firion still hits the wall, but instead of being sliced in half, he merely slumps to the ground, the gash in his chest bleeding heavily.

"Terra, help him!" Sephiroth says before Jecht falls upon him in a storm of bone-crushing punches and kicks. He dodges the first two, takes one on his sword, feels a rib give way as Jecht lands a blow on his chest. Slowly but surely, Sephiroth has to fall back – if he returns Jecht's blows, all he does is inflict a wound that knits itself a minute later and open himself up for further punishment. He can do nothing but stay on the defensive.

Still, Sephiroth cannot keep this up forever. He staggers back as Jecht's enormous left arm twists past his guard, fracturing his clavicle. In three minutes, maybe four, he is going to take a strike to his sword arm.

Then he is going to die.

* * *

_Wake up, old fool. You're not done yet._

Auron opens his good eye, looking for whoever called him an old fool. Then he realizes it was his own mind – he must be in quite a strange place thanks to all the blood loss, even if he doesn't need it. Sometimes he wishes the rules of being unsent were better-defined.

All he can see is blue sky at first, but then he cranes his neck forward. The castle comes into view, as well as its battlements –

Sephiroth is up there, fighting for his life, as Jecht slowly pushes him back toward where Terra is trying to heal another young man enough to be able to move him.

Gritting his teeth, Auron forces himself to his feet, grabbing his sword in the same motion. He doesn't pause to question who the other young man is, or why his friends – _friends now, not just companions _– are here. He just knows he's not going to let anyone else die fighting his battle.

Auron focuses on Jecht's face. The dash throws him up the wall in response. He manages to land on his feet, but his vision fades in and out for a moment as he does. There is not much strength left in him. Whatever he is going to do, he will have to do it soon.

He starts to run forward just as Jecht grabs hold of Sephiroth's sword with his impervious left hand, then slams his head into the younger man's. Auron can see Sephiroth's feet brace against the ground as the force of the attack travels through his body; the stone beneath them cracks and splinters from Jecht's power.

Even as this happens, Auron can see the clash of their wills blossom into a literal storm of energy, much denser than anything he ever produced fighting Jecht. _Sephiroth must have a strong will. _Auron focuses his own on the particles, picturing his own face on each of them. They hang in mid-air, not moving. Jecht is fighting him.

"JECHT!" Auron bellows. "I'M YOUR OPPONENT! ME!"

As Jecht whirls to face him, his concentration falters. The particles leap to Auron, suffusing him with a brief radiance. Still, despite their number, he can tell he is nowhere near full. He will have to take several blows for that, and he knows he can only take one.

Almost casually, Jecht rips yet another sword out of his chest.

He charges again, a wild thrust. Auron throws himself underneath the attack, coming up in a roll behind Jecht. A backhand swing shatters several of Jecht's bony protrusions, but it doesn't even slow the blitzer down. He turns – Auron can see his eyes narrow, flick from him to Sephiroth to Terra and the young man he doesn't know – and hurls his sword like a missile.

In the back of his mind, Auron is aware of Sephiroth hissing "not again." He knows he can dodge the attack, but he also knows it will probably hit Sephiroth, slowed as he is by his wounds. If he also manages to dodge, it will hit Terra. If by some miracle she also evades it, the young man will be decapitated.

He can't possibly block it. He's too weak, the force is too great. But if he doesn't, someone else is going to die.

"JECHT!" he roars, bringing his sword up to batter Jecht's aside.

He's too slow. Jecht's sword buries itself in his chest, crushing his ribs, destroying his heart and lungs, and snapping his spine as it does. With a wet gurgle, Auron topples to the ground again.

Then the power inside him grows. It doubles, doubles, doubles again, until it swells far beyond his limits, bursting out of him in a great release of glowing light. Jecht's sword is hurled out of his chest, spiraling away into the air. Auron gasps as his wounds heal in seconds. This metamorphosis is like pure waves of force pouring out of him, so powerful that it forces him to his feet.

Auron can feel the well of his power refilling itself even as he stands there in bewilderment. He opens his right eye, its sight restored again.

He holds two swords linked by a chain, but now they are not the only ones. Three more swords hang from the chain behind him, each light as a feather.

"I won't let you hurt anyone else, Jecht," Auron says. "This is our fight, and I'm the one who has to face you." He reverses his grip on his right-hand sword, then sends the chain into a slow, lazy spiral above his head, the other four swords gleaming as they whirl through the air.

"Round three."


	21. Chapter XXI

**Chapter XXI**

Firion is in some of the worst pain of his life. Terra has her hands pressed against his chest, healing energy emanating from them, but he can tell he won't be on his feet for a while now.

Sephiroth is a short distance away from the two of them. Even from behind, Firion can tell that the man is wounded – perhaps as badly as he is. Still, there is something unusual about Sephiroth, something unnatural; whatever it is, it lets him stand and bear injuries that would most likely have killed a normal man.

And the man in red, the one Sephiroth called Auron…

Even though Firion is a master of all conventional weaponry, what he sees defies the logic of battlefield armaments. There is no way that the whirling collection of swords and chains surrounding Auron should pose more of a threat to his enemy than to the man himself – and yet Jecht staggers under blow after blow while Auron stands tall, the eye of a storm of blades. Firion tries to make sense of what he's seeing, but his vision blurs and he realizes he has lost a great deal of blood.

Terra gently pushes him back against the pile of rubble; he doesn't even remember leaning forward. His mind growing dull, Firion surrenders himself to her efforts, knowing she's doing all she can.

_We're counting on you, Auron._

_

* * *

_As he fights Jecht, Auron experiences doubts similar to Firion's. While the five swords hanging from the chain look very impressive, he is using all his improvisational skill to fight with them. This kind of weapon was never meant to be wielded by someone with only two arms, so why does his Release Form have this many blades?

Whirling the chain around his head to strike Jecht from a distance is effective at keeping him out of the blitzer's zone, but the strikes don't have enough power to shatter Jecht's bones, which is, Auron thinks, the only way to defeat him. He can go back to wielding one sword in each hand as he did before, but the three other swords prove unwieldy and hard to manage despite their lack of weight.

_There must be an ideal form, but what is it?_

Auron leaps over a spinning charge from Jecht, his friend's sword cleaving great furrows in the battlement walls as the blitzer moves. With less than a thought – more a reflex – Auron extends the length of the chain as he hurls his left-hand sword down at Jecht. The blade sinks deep into Jecht's back, between his bony protrusions.

As Jecht turns to face Auron again, Auron drastically shortens the length of the chain, taking a gamble. It pays off – he is yanked sharply toward Jecht, as his left-hand sword is buried too deeply in the blitzer's back to come free. A quick mental effort augments this already-impressive speed with a dash, and Auron is suddenly descending on Jecht at incredible velocity.

At the last possible second, Jecht recognizes the trouble he's in. He brings up his sword in front of his chest as Auron thrusts with his right-hand blade. Auron's weapon blows clean through Jecht's, but doing so slows him down. When he stabs Jecht square in the chest, the force of his attack has already been blunted. He can feel the solid mass of Jecht's ribs actually crack for a moment, but then his sword slips, shearing off to the side along the bone. For a moment, it is oddly quiet; Auron realizes the power of his attack has blown all the air out of a large area around the two of them, leaving a noiseless vacuum.

The air rushes back in just in time for Auron to hear the thunderclap of Jecht backhanding him across the face with his steel gauntlet. He flies back from the blow, smashing right through the battlement wall, but his left-hand sword is still anchored firmly in Jecht's back, so he doesn't fall. Auron is stunned for a moment, but recovers his senses swiftly enough to see Jecht's chest flaring with the telltale power of yet another sword.

_Not this time. _Auron takes another gamble – he extends the length of the chain, then hurls his right-hand sword away from Jecht before shortening the chain again. The sword's momentum, combined with the chain's sudden decrease in length, wraps the chain firmly around Jecht's chest, the other three swords slashing at him as it does. _So I _can _control the length of the chain without touching it._

Jecht strains against the chain, but it holds fast, resisting even his titanic strength. Auron grabs hold of his right-hand sword, lengthens the chain just enough so he can wrap it fully around Jecht's front side, and plunges it into the blitzer's back next to his left-hand sword. He takes hold of both swords, keeping them firmly embedded in Jecht's back.

Then he shortens the chain again.

The roar of pain Jecht lets out as he is slowly and inevitably constricted chills Auron's blood, but he keeps hold of the swords, not letting them slip out. The other swords hanging on the chain bite into Jecht as the chain tightens, edges snapping inward seemingly of their own accord.

Still, Auron quickly realizes that the chain will grow no shorter. It is not that it has no room to, or that it is refusing him; Jecht's bones are just too strong. He will not break like this.

_What will it _take?

The stalemate will not last forever. Auron can see the energy of their wills exploding into the world as Jecht struggles against the chain, most of it immediately rushing back into the blitzer's body. For his part, Auron can tell his own well of power will not soon diminish, but he denies Jecht whatever he can.

Then Jecht does something Auron doesn't expect. In a burst of light, the Final Aeon vanishes, leaving only a battered human being in its place. Before Auron can figure out why Jecht would make himself so vulnerable, he realizes that Jecht is much smaller without his Final Aeon aspect; therefore, his swords are not embedded quite so deeply in his back any longer.

In that instant, Jecht erupts into a spinning flurry of limbs. Auron's swords go flying as he takes a kick straight in the face. Even as he commands the chain to tighten, Jecht bursts back into his Release Form, the power of the transformation sending Auron's weapon flying away in a disorderly mess.

The transformation also gives him a fresh sword, one he doesn't have to waste time pulling out of his chest. He brings it down in a devastating two-handed chop against the stone, splitting the battlements in half all the way down to their foundations. As Auron gets hold of his weapons again, Jecht does it again, separating an entire section of the battlements from the rest of the castle.

Auron knows better than to try to repeat his constricting trick; Jecht will be ready for it. He tries something simple, a chop at either side of Jecht's head with both his swords.

Jecht ignores the incoming attack completely, instead exploiting the large opening it gives him. As Auron's weapons close in on him from either side, he scythes his steel gauntlet right at the guardian's head through the blind spot in front of him. Auron sees the gauntlet coming, but he is already committed, there is no way he can stop the attack or dodge it –

Another length of chain materializes between the grips of his left- and right-hand swords. Jecht's gauntlet crashes right into it, his blow stymied, as Auron's swords spread cracks through both sides of his skull. Too stunned to try to grip the chain, Jecht instead stumbles away, teetering on the edge of the battlements. Auron, almost as shocked as Jecht is, can only watch as his old friend tumbles off the wall.

_What is this? _He stares at the chain that now links all five of his swords together in a circle. _Will I ever understand this thing? _A thought from him dismisses the new length of chain, freeing his swords from one another, but now Auron has to wonder if he's been using the weapon correctly at all.

His train of thought is derailed by the severed section of the battlements shooting skyward, shedding rubble as it goes.

Jecht rises up beneath it, kicking and punching at the enormous slab of stone he has somehow thrown into the air. With each blow, bricks crack and tumble free, but a vast vortex of burning power has begun to gather around Jecht, drawing the stones back into it. In a matter of seconds, what was once a wall has begun to resemble an enormous molten sphere. Another second, and it solidifies into a burning, solid mass of rock.

_Not a sphere, _Auron realizes, watching Jecht's familiar, choreographed movements. _A blitzball. He's going to perform the Jecht Shot._

Auron has seen Jecht play more than once. When he is not surrounded by water, Jecht can kick an ordinary blitzball so hard it can break a man's ribs.

And this blitzball weighs ten tons.

Jecht gives the ball one final smash with his fist, sending it spinning up into the sky, then hangs poised in midair, suspended by his own power. He's preparing to drop-kick it.

Auron knows there is no way he can dodge. For that matter, even if he runs, Jecht might target his allies – there is no telling what he might do in his Final Aeon aspect. He has to somehow block this attack, but it's impossible. There is no way he can muster the strength to stop it cold. He wastes a split second to glance at Sephiroth in the desperate hope that the other man might have some idea how to fight this, but the SOLDIER's gaze is riveted to the sight of the descending ball, a look of morbid fascination on his face.

He feels a knife twist in his gut. Fear. He hasn't felt this way since before he died. The helplessness, the total inability to fight something of this magnitude – the impotence –

"AURON!" Sephiroth shouts. "THINK OF SOMETHING!"

Jecht rears back his foot.

There's nothing he can do. How can he possibly fight this kind of power? It's ridiculous. All he has is these five swords, these five chained swords that can't even break the Final Aeon's bones.

_Five…_

Auron blinks his two eyes. Two eyes, two hands, two swords. That much he's sure of; it makes sense. But he received the other three, and this wellspring of power, when he took it upon himself to protect his allies. His three allies.

_Guardians protect._

Jecht slams his foot into the ball, sending it hurtling at Auron, and Auron realizes almost too late that this weapon isn't a weapon at all, not really, it's a shield –

Even as he performs a reverse dash away from Sephiroth, Auron also flips his right-hand sword into a reverse grip and changes the structure of the chain. He links the other four swords to the one he's still holding, rather than having them all linked to one another. A flick of his wrist and a command to lengthen the chain is all it takes to send the four swords whirling into the oncoming missile; they stab into its rocky surface and hold fast, just as Auron knew they would.

Auron performs another reverse dash away from Sephiroth while shortening the chain, pulling with all his might.

It would be impossible to block the Jecht Shot, but Auron doesn't need to. All he needs to do is alter its course. The ball, pulled by both the dash and the shortening chain, begins to swing around in a wide arc. Auron locates Jecht, who is landing heavily on the grass at the base of the castle. He performs a dash toward him, still tugging on the chain and shortening it.

Jecht looks up to see Auron heading straight for him, pulling the ball behind him. Their eyes lock, something wordless passing between them.

Auron lets go of his sword, simultaneously dashing toward Sephiroth. He just barely clears the edge of the ball before it slams straight into Jecht, crushing him into the ground. Huge fissures erupt through the stone foundations of the floating castle; the already-weakened battlements crumble in a storm of debris. Auron, still going at breakneck speed, grabs Sephiroth as gently as he can, getting him clear of the destruction. Terra follows with Firion a short distance behind.

The four of them alight on a distant tower just in time to watch the entire floating castle collapse in a hail of stone and dust.

Sephiroth lets out a long breath, holding his chest. "That was insane."

Auron doesn't respond, instead picturing Jecht's face in his mind. He feels the dash propel him toward the shattered platform, which is visibly wobbling above the void.

Jecht's shattered body is buried in rubble far too heavy to lift. Auron can see a splintered limb here, a broken rib laid open to the world there, but the full extent of the carnage is hidden beneath a layer of rock. Somehow, this does not make him feel any better.

His breath catches in his throat as Jecht opens his right eye – his left is sheared straight through by a piece of shrapnel.

"Hard… talk," Jecht croaks. "Lungs're mostl' gone."

Auron grits his teeth against the feeling of tears welling up in both his eyes. "Dammit, Jecht. I'm sorry."

Jecht gives a harsh cough that is probably supposed to be a laugh, spraying a fine, bloody mist as he does. "Happens," he whispers. "Now… make it… right."

"I will." For lack of a better place to lay his hand, Auron rests it on Jecht's brow. "Chaos, Cosmos, Shinryu, I'll kill them all if I have to."

Another cough, much weaker this time. "Good t' see… your eyes…"

Auron closes them as Jecht expires. When he looks again, only his left eye works.

* * *

Sephiroth mutely watches Auron return to the tower. He has never seen the guardian look so angry.

"Terra," Auron says, approaching her as she kneels over Firion's prostrate form. "Could you please go and quickly burn Jecht's body? It's less than he deserves, but all we can offer." The girl nods before dashing off toward the remains of the castle, which continue to destabilize; Sephiroth estimates the entire structure will collapse within ten minutes.

Before Sephiroth can decide whether he should thank Auron for saving their lives or apologize for forcing him to kill his friend, Firion sits up. The gash in the young man's chest is no longer bleeding, and his face has regained some of its color. "I'm sorry," he says. "He was your brother, wasn't he?"

Auron nods.

"But still… you fought to protect us." Firion gestures at Auron's blade, which the guardian retrieved before returning to the tower. "I saw your Release Form hit its peak when you stepped in front of his sword. That must be your ideal – protecting others."

"You're a perceptive one," Auron says, his voice still tinged with bitterness.

"But why was he so powerful?" Firion asks. "What was _he _fighting for?"

"Firion," Sephiroth says sharply, but Auron holds up a hand.

"It's simple," Auron tells Firion. "He was fighting for his son."


End file.
